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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread, milk, butter, raisins, currants, eggs, citron, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pour warm milk over broken bread and let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. While warm, mix in butter, raisins, eggs, currants, citron, nutmeg, and any additional flavorings.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer mixture to a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with wine 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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread
Soaked in warm milk, it softens and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like structure.
Milk
Soaks the bread and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a soft, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Transfer mixture to a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.. Baking low and slow lets the eggs set gently without curdling or drying out, keeping the pudding moist and tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, raisin, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, raisin, 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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