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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, suet, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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

  1. Mix all ingredients together until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

  3. Boil for 4 hours.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Add body and soak up liquid, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender during long cooking.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, along with a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 hours. Long, steady simmering cooks the dense batter through and gives it a moist, tender texture. If the water boils dry or drops to a weak simmer, the pudding can turn heavy or unevenly cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, raisin, molasses, milk, cinnamon, clove. 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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