Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, flour, breadcrumbs, candied citron, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, seedless raisins, currants, flour, bread crumbs, candied citron, salt, and mixed spice.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and enough new milk to create a stiff batter, mixing until thoroughly incorporated.

Cloth and boil

  1. Prepare a strong pudding cloth by rubbing the outside with butter to prevent sticking.

  2. Leave some room for expansion and tie the cloth tightly with stout twine.

  3. Place a plate in the bottom of a large kettle to prevent burning and boil the pudding for at least 7 hours.

Serve

  1. To serve, heat spirit and pour it over the pudding in a large dish, light it with writing paper, and decorate with holly sprigs with berries.

  2. This pudding is best served last at dinner with the lights lowered until cut.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 set the pudding as it cooks, giving it structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs, giving a tender, moist crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture as they plump during boiling.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and a tart, chewy bite.

The step that matters

Leave room for expansion and tie the cloth tightly. The batter swells as it cooks and expands; if the cloth is tied too snugly the pudding can burst, while a loose tie lets water seep in and make it soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, egg, milk. 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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes