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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, sugar, flour, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  2. Soak the raisins in the brandy before mixing them in.

Mix and steam

  1. In a large bowl, combine the soaked bread crumbs, chopped suet, currants, raisins, brown sugar, flour, citron, grated nutmeg, and eggs.

  2. Steam the mixture for six 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 structure as they set during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk to give the pudding a moist, tender body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness, plumped by the brandy.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture for six hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through evenly without drying out. Letting the water boil dry or cooking unevenly can leave the center underdone or the edges dry.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, beef, raisin, sugar, flour, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, beef, raisin, sugar, flour, nutmeg. 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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