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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, eggs, sugar, citron, nutmeg, milk, bread crumbs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, chopped suet, eggs, sugar, citron, grated nutmegs, milk, bread crumbs, and flour. Mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

  2. Grease a tin pan and pour the mixture into it.

Cook

  1. Cover the pan and boil for 10 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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 add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after cooking.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, chewy texture and fruitiness.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness, chewy texture and fruitiness.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan covered during the long boil. Covering the pan traps steam so the pudding cooks gently and stays moist over the long cooking time. Letting water in or the pan boil dry would dry out the pudding and can scorch it.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, egg, sugar, nutmeg, milk, bread. 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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