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Dessert

English Plum

A steamed pudding made from soaked bread, milk, eggs, suet, flour, raisins, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread in milk.

  2. Mash the soaked bread well.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the bread and milk mixture.

  4. Stir in the chopped mutton suet, flour, and salt.

Wrap and boil

  1. Prepare a strong cotton or linen cloth by dipping it in hot water and sprinkling it with flour.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the cloth and tie it securely without pressing the pudding.

  3. Place the pudding in a pot of boiling water and let it boil for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with wine or cream sauce.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked in milk, it forms the body of the pudding and holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as they heat, giving the pudding structure.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it tender as it cooks.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter and gives the cooked pudding its firm structure.
Milk
Moistens the bread and keeps the batter soft before it sets.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth without pressing the pudding. The pudding needs room to swell as the flour and eggs set during boiling. Pressing it compacts the mixture, which can make the finished pudding dense and heavy.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, mutton, flour):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, mutton, flour. 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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