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Dessert

American Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made from crushed biscuits, milk, eggs, lemon brandy, nutmeg, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

American 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. Crush the biscuits.

  2. Soak them in enough milk to cover for several hours.

  3. Add 3 ½ cups of milk.

  4. Beat in 6 eggs.

  5. Mix in lemon‑brandy.

  6. Add grated nutmeg.

  7. Fold in the stoned raisins coated in flour.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 2 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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Biscuits (crackers)
Crumbs soaked in milk form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the mixture and give it a firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the biscuits and sets with the eggs into a moist texture.
Stoned raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness; flouring them helps keep them suspended in the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the floured raisins. Raisins coated in flour resist sinking to the bottom during baking. Folding gently keeps them evenly distributed and avoids deflating the batter.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, egg, brandy, nutmeg, raisin, flour. 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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