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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with eggs, milk, stale bread, flour, sugar, suet, dried fruits, spices, and fortified with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites until very light.

  2. Add the sweet milk and stir in the stale bread gradually.

  3. Mix in the flour, brown sugar, minced beef suet, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, orange peel, ginger, and cherries.

  4. Add the nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, clove, brandy, sherry, salt, and the remaining milk; stir well.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill buttered molds three-fourths full, cover tightly, and steam for five hours.

  2. To serve, steam the pudding for one hour before serving.

  3. Tip the hot pudding onto a heated platter, garnish with holly, and pour a mixture of brandy and alcohol over it.

  4. Light the spirits and serve immediately, ensuring the flame is steady.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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

Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and structure as they set.
Egg whites
Whipped to a light foam, they lighten the batter and help it rise.
Stale bread
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding a soft, tender body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Filling the molds and steaming. Filling molds only three-fourths full leaves room for the pudding to expand, and a tight cover keeps steam trapped so the pudding cooks through and stays moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

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