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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients well in a large bowl.

  2. Grease bowls and fill them with the mixture.

Steam

  1. Dip a cloth in boiling water, sprinkle it with flour, and tie it over the bowls tightly.

  2. Place the bowls in boiling water and keep it boiling for 6 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. Flour + raisintop 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. Currant + raisintop 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 batter and add structure and richness as they set during steaming.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten framework that gives the pudding its body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full 6 hours. The pudding cooks by steam and the water around the bowls. If the water drops below a boil for long, the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn out dense or undercooked in the centre. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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