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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, raisins, currants, mixed peel, bread crumbs, flour, suet, eggs, brandy, lemon, and spices.

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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and prepare the fruit.

  2. Chop the suet and mix it with the flour and bread crumbs.

  3. Beat the eggs, then add the brandy, lemon juice, baking soda mixture, and mix thoroughly.

  4. Dampen a cloth and dust it with flour.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the pudding mixture in the cloth, tie it tightly, leaving room for expansion.

  2. Steam for 3.5 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy 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. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
Flour
Provides the body and structure that holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the steamed pudding tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the lemon juice to lighten the pudding as it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dark fruit flavour come through.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The pudding needs room to expand as it steams and rises, so the cloth must be tied tightly yet loosely enough for expansion. Too tight can squeeze the mixture, while too loose lets water seep in and makes it soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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