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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, milk, spices, and candied peel, baked or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the batter

  1. Mix breadcrumbs, flour, and suet together.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add to them the sweet milk mixed with baking soda.

  3. Combine the egg and milk mixture with the suet and flour, beating well.

  4. Stir in the currants, raisins, candied peels, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt, mixing thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Choose to bake or boil the pudding; if baking, bake for nearly 2 hours at 350°F (175°C).

  2. If boiling, pour the mixture into a cloth, tie it allowing room to swell, and boil for 6 hours.

  3. Serve with vanilla 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Stale breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the batter for a tender crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room in the cloth when boiling. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding cannot swell as it rises and cooks, and it may become dense or burst the cloth.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, flour, egg, milk, orange, lemon. 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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