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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A traditional English plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, stale bread crumbs, brown sugar, flour, candied orange peel, nutmeg, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the currants.

  2. Stone the raisins.

  3. Mix all the dry ingredients well together.

Mix and pack

  1. Beat the eggs and add the brandy.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pack the mixture into greased molds.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for six hours at the time of making and six hours when ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add richness and structure as they set during boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding body and a soft texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Flour
Gives the pudding structure so it holds its shape once set.

The step that matters

Boil for the full twelve hours in two sessions. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starches through and gives the dense pudding its set texture. Letting the water drop below a gentle simmer or cutting the time short can leave the centre wet and heavy, so keep the pot topped up with boiling water throughout.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, sugar, lemon, flour, nutmeg, egg. 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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