Skip to main content
Preserve

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, almonds, butter, flour, brown sugar, spices, eggs, and brandy-wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone and cut the fruit, but do not chop too finely.

  2. Blanch and chop the almonds.

  3. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, citron, almonds, butter, flour, brown sugar, and spices. Mix all ingredients well before adding the eggs and brandy-wine mixture.

Mix and boil

  1. Beat the mixture thoroughly for at least one hour.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding boiler and boil for six hours, ensuring the water remains boiling and refilling as necessary.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and lift to the pudding as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as it sets.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for six hours with the water kept boiling. Steady, continuous boiling cooks the pudding evenly and sets the batter. If the water drops below a boil and is not topped up, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, almond, butter, flour, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes