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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, citron, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. Chop the beef suet finely.

  2. Mix the suet, raisins, currants, citron, flour, nutmeg, salt, mace, and cinnamon together thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add the sugar, then beat again.

  2. Stir in the cream and brandy (or orange juice), then pour over the bread crumbs.

  3. Combine the suet and floured fruit mixture with the egg-and-crumb mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 6 hours, ensuring the water remains boiling.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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 binding to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped to add air and lightness to the batter before steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding its body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a moist, rich texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Flour
Helps bind the fruit and suet into the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Deflating the whipped whites by stirring hard removes the air that gives the pudding its lightness, so the mixture should be folded in gently.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, flour, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, flour, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, egg. 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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