Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Canadian Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, carrot, flour, sugar, molasses, suet, raisins, currants, lemon peel, dates, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Canadian Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, grated carrot, flour, sugar, molasses, suet, raisins, currants, and chopped lemon peel.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix baking soda with milk and add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir in baking powder, chopped dates, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and salt until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and cover tightly.

  2. Steam for 4 hours, ensuring the water does not boil dry.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist during long steaming.
Molasses
Adds dark color, sweetness and a moist, dense texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and milk to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Baking powder
Adds additional lift for a lighter crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the steaming water from boiling dry. Steaming for 4 hours needs a steady supply of water. If the pot boils dry, the pudding can scorch or cook unevenly, and steam heat stops reaching the mold.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, molasses, raisin, currant, milk. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes