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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A traditional British plum pudding made with bread, milk, suet, raisins, currants, eggs, candied fruit, almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread slices in boiling milk until soft.

  2. Beat the soaked bread with clarified suet, raisins, currants, sugar, beaten eggs, candied fruits, and pounded almonds.

  3. Mix the ingredients thoroughly and add the brandy.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until done.

  2. Turn out the pudding and sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

  3. For boiling, make sure to flour the cloth or mold well.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 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 mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds body and soft moisture to the pudding.
Clarified suet
Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds a boozy aroma and flavor to the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, raisin, sugar, egg, orange, lemon. 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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