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Dessert

Boston Baked Plum Pudding

A baked plum pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, citron, nutmeg, brandy, and vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Boston Baked Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the beef suet, raisins, currants, brown sugar, flour sifted with baking powder, eggs, milk, chopped citron, salt, nutmeg extract, and brandy. Mix until you have a rather short batter.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered cake tin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  2. Serve with vanilla 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. 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense pudding together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it bakes.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and taste rich.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix until you have a rather short batter. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes a pudding tough and dense rather than tender. Stop once the ingredients are just combined.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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