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Dessert

Baked Plum-pudding

A baked pudding made with suet, dried fruit, candied citrus, flour, and spices, sweetened with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Baked Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, candied citron, lemon peel, orange peel, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Quickly stir in the brandy, egg, and enough milk to create a thick batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding mold.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar before serving and accompany with rum or 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm when baked.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the liquids quickly. Once the brandy, egg and milk meet the dry ingredients, the baking powder begins reacting, so the batter should be mixed and poured into the mold without delay to keep its rise.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, flour, lemon, orange, nutmeg, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, flour, lemon, orange, nutmeg, brandy. 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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