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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, brown sugar, eggs, spices, flour, milk, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, brown sugar, eggs, allspice, cinnamon, citron peel, and flour.

  2. Stir in milk and chopped suet until well mixed.

Boil and cool

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth and tie securely.

  2. Boil the pudding in a large pot of water for 4 hours.

  3. After boiling, let it cool for 20 minutes before removing the cloth to prevent breaking.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when heated.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during steaming.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, plus a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dry ingredients hydrate into a cohesive batter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cool the pudding before removing the cloth. The pudding is soft and fragile when hot. Letting it cool allows the starches and proteins to firm up, so it holds its shape when unwrapped.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, flour, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, egg, allspice, cinnamon, flour, milk. 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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