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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dried fruit, suet, flour, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the raisins on a paste board and combine with currants, candied lemon peel, candied citron, Jordan almonds, and beef suet in a large bowl.

  2. Add flour, biscuit powder, moist sugar, nutmeg, mixed spices, carbonate of soda, and coarse sea salt to the mixture.

  3. Heat a little milk with the vanilla pod until soft. Remove the pod, mince it, and mix it back into the milk.

  4. Pour the milk into the pudding mixture along with the beaten egg yolks and stir well.

Finish and boil

  1. Just before placing the pudding into the mold, stir in the brandy.

  2. Boil the pudding for eight 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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Biscuit powder
Adds dry body and flavour, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to a darker colour.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with acid in the mixture to lighten the texture.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for eight hours. A long, steady boil cooks the eggs and flour through to a set, moist crumb. If the water is allowed to drop too low or boil too hard, the pudding can cook unevenly or turn heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, almond, beef, flour, biscuit, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, almond, beef, flour, biscuit, sugar. 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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