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Dessert

Plum Roll

A steamed roll filled with raisins and lemon, topped with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Plum Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  2. Beat the egg and add it to the milk, then mix into the flour mixture to form a soft dough.

Fill and roll

  1. For the filling, mix raisins, sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and the beaten egg.

  2. Roll the dough to 1 inch thick, spread the filling on top, and roll it up.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Place the rolled dough in a mold and steam for 2 hours.

  2. For the sauce, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and sugar. Gradually add warm and boiling water, stirring constantly until smooth.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the dough and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to help it rise and lighten.
Egg
Binds the dough and filling together and adds structure to the filling.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour forms a soft, workable dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the raisin filling and the sauce.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough and filling into the mold. If the dough is rolled too thin or the filling spills out, the roll can open up during steaming. Keeping the dough at the stated thickness and rolling it up snugly helps the filling stay sealed inside.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, raisin, sugar, sauce. 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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