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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

Prepare the pudding mixture

  1. Cut the brown crust off the bread and soak it in the milk.

  2. Mash the soaked bread well.

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

  4. Cut the raisins in half and roll them in flour.

  5. Mix in the chopped mutton suet, flour, salt, and raisins.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a strong cotton or linen cloth in hot water.

  2. Sprinkle the cloth with flour.

  3. Pour the pudding mixture into the cloth.

  4. Tie the cloth securely without pressing it.

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

  6. 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it gives the pudding its soft, moist body.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in flavor.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the pudding structure.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely without pressing it. The pudding needs room to expand as it cooks. Pressing it compacts the mixture, and a loose tie lets water seep in and dilute the texture during the long boil.

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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