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Dessert

Swanwick English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, spices, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Swanwick English Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, flour, raisins, currants, brown sugar, citron, candied orange peel, and candied lemon peel.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and juice, eggs, ground cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and milk. Mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam or boil for several hours until cooked through.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb liquid, giving the pudding its body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavour.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the pudding hold its shape.

The step that matters

Steam or boil until cooked through. The pudding is dense and must cook slowly and evenly for several hours. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and checking that the centre is set prevents a soggy or undercooked middle.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, egg. 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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