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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked dessert made with suet, flour, raisins, currants, candied peel, sugar, baking powder, mixed spice, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet finely, sprinkling a little flour to prevent sticking.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder.

  3. Add the chopped suet and rub it into the flour with your hands.

  4. Pit the raisins and add them to the mixture.

  5. Wash and dry the currants, then add them to the bowl.

  6. Chop the candied peel and mix it in.

  7. Add the sugar and sprinkle in the mixed spice.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  2. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the bowl and stir until combined.

  3. If needed, add more milk to achieve a stiff paste.

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

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture to bring the dry ingredients into a stiff paste.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Too much liquid makes the paste slack and the pudding heavy, while too little leaves dry flour unhydrated. Add milk gradually and stop once the mixture holds a stiff paste.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, egg, 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.

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