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Dessert

Queen of Plum Puddings

A rich, spiced pudding made with butter, suet, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, milk, cider, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Queen of Plum Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the yolks of the eggs until smooth and light.

  3. Add the milk, then alternate adding the flour and beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir in the cider and spices, then fold in the dredged fruit. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Prepare the cloth

  1. Wring out a pudding cloth in hot water and flour the inside.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into the cloth and boil for 5 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter; beaten whites lighten its structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps cream the butter to a light texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the cloth and boil for 5 hours. The cloth must be well wrung and floured so it does not stick or leak. The pudding needs steady boiling for the full time so the batter sets through.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, milk, cider. 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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