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Dessert

Plum Duff

A steamed pudding made from stale bread, flour, suet, dried fruit, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Duff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the stale bread in cold water and drain it dry.

  2. Add the sifted flour, suet, raisins, sugar, currants, prunes, salt, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and vinegar.

  3. Mix all ingredients thoroughly with cold water.

Bag the pudding

  1. Turn the bags inside out, drop them into boiling water, and render out slightly.

  2. Dredge the bags thoroughly in dry flour.

  3. Turn the bags flour side in and fill them with the pudding, securing the opening firmly.

Cook

  1. Drop the filled bags into boiling water and cook for at least two hours, preferably three to four hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and drained, it forms the body and crumb of the pudding.
Flour
Adds structure and helps bind the mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Suet
Fat that adds richness and a tender, moist texture as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Dried fruit that adds sweetness, chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavor.
Currants
Dried fruit that adds sweetness, chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Securing the bag and keeping the water boiling. The pudding is sealed only in a cloth bag, so a loose closure lets water in and makes the pudding soggy. The water must stay at a steady boil for the full cooking time so the centre cooks through evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, sugar, clove, cinnamon, vinegar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, sugar, clove, cinnamon, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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