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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, stale bread crumbs, sugar, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Chop the suet finely and mince the orange peel.

  2. Clean, wash, and dry the currants, and stone the raisins.

Make the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the brandy.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  4. Pack the pudding into well-greased pudding molds.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 6 hours immediately after preparing.

  2. Boil for another 6 hours when ready to serve.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter together and help set the pudding structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and crumb.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while helping preserve the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Contribute concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil for 6 hours immediately after preparing. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starches through and sets the dense batter. Letting the water drop below a simmer can leave the pudding heavy and undercooked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, sugar, lemon, orange, flour, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, sugar, lemon, orange, flour, nutmeg. 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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