Skip to main content
Preserve

English Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, flour, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, citron, sugar, apple, eggs, milk, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, flour, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, citron, sugar, grated apple, eggs, milk, salt, lemon rind, nutmeg, and allspice until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a cone-shaped bag or tin.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 5 hours.

  2. Once done, remove from the water and place on a dish.

  3. Illuminate the pudding with brandy before serving.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soaks up liquid and lightens the dense mixture for a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set its structure as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. The pudding must stay at a steady, gentle boil with the bag or tin submerged, because uneven or low heat leaves the centre under-set and the texture heavy. Keep the water topped up so it does not boil dry.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, bread, raisin, sugar, apple, 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes