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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweet milk, eggs, bread, molasses, raisins, currants, cinnamon, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. 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.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, beaten eggs, and bread.

  3. Add molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, cinnamon, baking powder, and flour.

  4. Mix until just combined, being careful not to over-stir.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for 2 hours.

  2. For the sauce, cream together 1 cup powdered sugar and ½ cup butter, adding flavor to taste.

  3. Optionally, steam the pudding on the second day for enhanced flavor.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (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 they set during baking.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the milk and eggs, giving the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter depth of flavor.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness as they plump during baking.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets the pudding into a firm, sliceable body.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the pudding rise and stay light.

The step that matters

Mix until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the pudding dense and tough rather than tender.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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