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Dessert

English Plum-pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, dried fruit, sugar, bread crumbs, suet, spices, and flavored with brandy, wine, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, raisins, currants, brown sugar, bread crumbs, suet, citron, almonds, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, mace, lemon rind, brandy, wine, and rose-water.

  2. Mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a pudding mold.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in water for 4 hours.

  2. Before serving, pour brandy over the pudding and ignite it to serve flaming.

  3. Serve with sauce.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 help give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, chew, and moisture to the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and is ignited to create the flaming presentation.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must cook long and steadily in water so the eggs and crumbs set through and the suet melts evenly. Letting the water drop too low can leave the center dense or uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, raisin, sugar, bread, almond, nutmeg, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raisin, sugar, bread, almond, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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.

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