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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread crumbs, figs, citron, suet, raisins, currants, eggs, sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 614 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cover the bread crumbs with hot milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until creamy, then add sugar and mix well.

  3. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the bread and milk.

Add the fruit and suet

  1. Chop and flour the figs and suet, then add to the mixture.

Fold and steam

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture.

  2. Butter a pudding mold and fill it three-quarters full.

  3. Steam the pudding in a single mold for 5 to 10 hours.

  4. Serve with brandy 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. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Fig + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the batter.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Hot milk
Softens the bread crumbs and moistens the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff and folded gently so the air they hold is not lost. Overmixing deflates the batter and makes the pudding denser.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, fig, milk, sugar, brandy, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, fig, milk, sugar, brandy, egg, cinnamon. 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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