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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, citron, spices, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Sift the flour, salt, and spices together.

  2. Add the suet and fruit, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add the cream, then stir the egg yolk mixture into the other ingredients.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Steam

  1. Steam for six hours, ensuring the water remains boiling, replenishing the water as needed.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 it for a tender texture.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist as it steams.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Bread
Soaks up liquid and adds body to the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling while steaming. If the water stops boiling, steam output drops and the pudding cooks unevenly and becomes heavy. Replenishing with water that keeps the pot at a steady boil maintains even, moist heat for the full six hours.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, sugar, bread, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, sugar, bread, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace. 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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