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Dessert

An Excellent Plum-pudding

A rich, fruit-filled pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, sugar, eggs, milk, wine, brandy, raisins, currants, citron, spices, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

An Excellent Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the raisins and currants in a portion of the flour to prevent them from sinking.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, flour, suet, sugar, eggs, milk, wine and brandy mixture, raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, mixed spice, and molasses. Mix well until fully combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 5 hours according to general directions.

  3. Serve with plum-pudding 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the dense batter, adding body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds together when boiled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and fruit.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dredge the raisins and currants in flour. Coating the dried fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the thick batter instead of sinking to the bottom during boiling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, sugar, egg, milk, wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, egg, milk, wine, brandy. 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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