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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with suet, sugar, dried fruit, flour, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the beef suet, sugar, raisins, currants, flour, bread crumbs, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Add enough milk to form a stiff batter and mix well.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a well-floured bag or mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in water for five hours.

  2. Once cooked, remove from the bag and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. Pour a little brandy around the pudding and light it just 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during boiling, adding richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the pudding a light, soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tartness, fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Transfer the mixture into a well-floured bag or mold. Flour on the bag or mold keeps the pudding from sticking, and the cloth or mold must be sealed so water does not soak into the batter while it boils.

Swap the currant

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

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

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