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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with soaked bread, molasses, spices, suet, dried fruits, and flour.

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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in sweet milk.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the soaked bread, molasses, egg, spices, nutmeg, baking soda, suet, raisins, currants, citron, and flour.

  2. Beat the mixture well until combined.

  3. Transfer to a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 5 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, deep flavor.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and adds structure to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the texture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 5 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through evenly. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the center.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, molasses, egg, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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