Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, eggs, currants, nutmeg, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 mixture

  1. Mix raisins, flour, suet, eggs, currants, nutmeg, and sugar thoroughly with your hands at night.

  2. In the morning, add sweet milk and stir well.

  3. Pack the mixture into a large bowl.

Steam the pudding

  1. Wring a strong cloth out of hot water.

  2. Dredge the cloth with flour.

  3. Tie the cloth over the bowl.

  4. Place the bowl in a steamer.

  5. Cover the steamer with a cloth.

  6. Tie the lid on the steamer.

  7. Put the steamer over a kettle of boiling water.

  8. Replenish the kettle with hot water as it boils away.

  9. Steam for 9 hours.

  10. Make the pudding 3 or 4 days before using.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, set it on the stove 3 or 4 hours before dinner.

  2. Steam again.

  3. Turn out onto a platter.

  4. Garnish with evergreen and bitter-sweet berries.

  5. Serve with a rich 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the pudding body as it steams.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the kettle replenished while steaming. Steaming for 9 hours needs a steady supply of hot water. If the kettle runs dry, the pudding cooks unevenly and can scorch or dry out at the edges.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, beef, egg, nutmeg, sugar, 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

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes