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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peel, flour, and eggs, served with a lemon‑brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Make the pudding

  1. In a basin, combine raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peels, citron, flour, bread crumbs, and nutmeg.

  2. Mix in the eggs and a little milk until well combined.

  3. Butter a pudding mold and pour the mixture into it.

  4. Cover with a sheet of paper and tie the mold in a cloth.

  5. Place the pudding in a large pot of boiling water and boil for 4½ hours.

  6. Alternatively, tie the mixture in a floured pudding cloth and boil in a basin.

  7. Once cooked, remove from the cloth and mold, and place on a dish.

  8. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix egg yolks, powdered sugar, and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add lemon peel and stir over low heat until thickened, but do not boil.

  3. Stir in brandy and serve separately or poured over the pudding.

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

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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 help give the pudding its set structure when cooked.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the dense pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up moisture and add body, giving the pudding a lighter, softer crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently set over low heat, giving it a smooth body.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be stirred over low heat until it thickens and not allowed to boil.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, sugar, lemon, orange, flour, bread. 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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