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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with raisins, sugar, mixed peel, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare all ingredients and mix them together in a large bowl.

  2. Butter a mold and fill it with the pudding mixture.

Boil

  1. Tie the mold in a cloth and place it in boiling water.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pudding onto a napkin.

  2. Sprinkle the top with white sugar.

  3. Serve with brandy sauce or plain cream.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide sweetness, moisture and chewy body to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its tender, moist crumb.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding bulk and absorb moisture so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the bread crumbs into the mixture.
Mixed peel
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and a slightly bitter flavour contrast.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. The mold must stay fully submerged in steadily boiling water for the whole time. If the water drops or stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn out heavy or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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