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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, currants, raisins, milk, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Warm the molasses and stir in the finely chopped suet.

  2. Gradually pour the suet mixture into the flour.

  3. Add the currants, chopped raisins, and milk.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm molasses and add it to the mixture. Stir thoroughly after adding the baking soda.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in a well-greased double kettle for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with hot or cold 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. 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. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep flavour and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a batter.

The step that matters

Dissolving and stirring in the baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed so it reacts with the molasses throughout the batter. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of bitter alkali or dense areas with no lift.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, raisin, molasses):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, raisin, molasses. 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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