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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, milk, molasses, spices, mixed fruit, and served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, chopped suet, milk with dissolved baking soda, molasses, salt, cloves, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and mixed fruit. Mix well and pour into a greased pudding boiler.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat butter until creamy, then gradually add powdered sugar. Pour in boiling water and stir for 1 minute 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Butter
Creates a creamy base for the sauce and adds richness.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it become smooth.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must cook gently and steadily for the full time so the flour and suet set through. Letting the water drop too low can leave the pudding dense and undercooked in the center.

Swap the mace

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

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

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