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Dessert

Bhtation Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with dried apples, molasses, suet, raisins, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bhtation Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Soak the dried apples overnight.

  2. In the morning, combine the chopped apples with molasses in a bowl.

  3. Keep the mixture warm for 1-2 hours.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the chopped suet, water, chopped raisins, salt, cinnamon, flour, and baking powder to the mixture.

  2. Stir everything together thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a bowl or pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 2.5 hours.

  3. Serve with lemon 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a rich, deep flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Chopped raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Dried apples
Add fruity sweetness and moisture, softened by soaking before use.

The step that matters

Stir everything together thoroughly. Thorough mixing spreads the baking powder evenly through the batter, so the pudding rises uniformly instead of in patches or with dense pockets.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, raisin, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, cinnamon, flour. 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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