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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread, molasses, raisins, currants, spices, suet, sugar, eggs, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak the bread

  1. Soak the stale bread in milk overnight.

  2. In the morning, pour away the unabsorbed milk.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl over a kettle of hot water.

  2. Bake very slowly at 300°F (150°C) for five hours.

  3. Ensure the raisins are stoned or chopped before adding.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Set the pudding and bind the mixture into a firm, sliceable body.
Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a soft, cake-like structure.
Suet
Adds fat, which gives the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness and a dark color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown during baking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pieces of dried fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake very slowly at 300°F (150°C) for five hours. A low, long bake lets the eggs and starches set gently and evenly without drying out or scorching the outside. Baking hotter risks a dense, dry or burnt pudding with a raw centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, molasses, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, molasses, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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