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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, almonds, bread crumbs, preserved fruits, spices, sugar, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, chopped sweet and bitter almonds, and soaked bread crumbs until well combined.

  2. Add the chopped preserved fruits and mixed spice to the mixture.

  3. In another bowl, beat the sugar and eggs together until well combined.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the pudding mixture, adding milk to achieve a thick batter consistency.

Soak, boil and serve

  1. Pour the brandy over the fruit and spice mixture, let it sit for 3-4 hours, stirring occasionally.

  2. Tie the pudding mixture in a cloth and boil for 5 hours.

  3. Once done, turn the pudding out onto a dish, sift loaf sugar over the top, and serve with wine 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding firmness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and hold moisture, keeping the pudding tender.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown slightly.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the dried fruit and spices it soaks.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and a slight texture against the soft crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk to a thick batter. Bread crumbs and flour absorb liquid as they rest and cook. Too much milk makes the batter loose, so the pudding may not hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, almond, bread, milk, lemon, 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.

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