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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, breadcrumbs, citron, eggs, milk, brown sugar, molasses, and spices.

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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine currants, raisins, beef suet, bread crumbs, and citron.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in milk, brown sugar, and molasses.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture last.

Boil

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold and tie securely.

  2. Boil the pudding in a large pot of water for 6 to 7 hours, turning it several times.

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter while whipped whites lighten its texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, slightly bitter flavor.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while deepening the flavor.
Currants
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten until stiff trap air that lightens the batter. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and preserves a lighter texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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