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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, sour milk, molasses, eggs, bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, spices, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the sour milk, molasses, and eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs, chopped suet, raisins, currants, dates, figs, baking soda, and flour.

  4. Flavor the mixture with spices and vanilla.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into pudding molds and steam for 4 hours.

  2. Serve hot with 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense, fruity batter together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives a rich, tender texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter for 4 hours. The batter must be fully enclosed and kept at a steady simmering steam so heat sets the eggs and flour evenly. Uneven or low heat leaves the center gummy, while the sealed molds prevent drying.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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