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Dessert

Quick Plum Pudding

A quick plum pudding made with canned plum pudding, bread crumbs, suet, eggs, raisins, and milk, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Quick Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Crumble the canned plum pudding and grate the bread crumbs overnight.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in enough milk to soften them.

  3. Powder the suet and stone the raisins.

Mix and cook

  1. In the morning, mix all ingredients together.

  2. Turn the mixture into a well-greased pudding mold.

  3. Boil for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a rich, sweet 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as they cook, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body, giving the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during the long cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the suet and pudding.
Stoned raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Canned plum pudding
Provides much of the flavour, spice and moisture in the base mixture.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. A long, steady boil gives the eggs and bread time to set through the centre. Too little heat or time leaves the pudding wet and loose inside.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, 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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