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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, suet, bread, currants, raisins, spices, and optional wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, eggs, sugar, suet, grated nutmeg, grated bread, currants, raisins, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda.

  2. If desired, add the wine or brandy. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with pudding 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding body and a crumb-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly.
Currants
Provide concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout.
Baking soda
Reacts to lighten the batter and help it rise during steaming.

The step that matters

Steam for 4 hours. Steaming gently cooks the eggs and starch evenly without drying the pudding. Water must be kept at a steady simmer around the mold, since low or uneven heat leaves the centre undercooked and heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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