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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, sugar, flour, citron, and mixed spices.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs.

  3. Pour the milk and egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

  2. Cover the mold with a cloth and steam for 6 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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dried fruit within the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, rich color.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a batter.

The step that matters

Steaming the covered mold. Steam must be kept steadily in the pot for the full six hours. Gentle, continuous steam cooks the eggs and flour evenly through the dense batter, while letting the water level drop can leave the pudding undercooked or dry at the edges.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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