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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Mix and bag

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, seeded raisins, currants, citron, sugar, eggs, milk, brandy, grated nutmegs, and salt.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very stiff.

  3. Place the mixture into one or two cloth bags.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the bags in a large pot of water for 7 to 8 hours.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds solid fat that melts during cooking, giving the pudding richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, helping the pudding hold together.
Flour
Thickens the batter into a very stiff dough that gives the pudding its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and brandy.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the mixture soft before it firms.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the bags for 7 to 8 hours. The bags must stay fully submerged in water at a steady boil for the whole time. Water keeps the heat even and the pudding moist, and if the pot boils dry or the bags are not sealed, the pudding can dry out or turn soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, egg, milk, brandy, nutmeg, 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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