Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, figs, suet, flour, and spices, finished in a 300°F oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

English 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.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, citron, figs, sugar, flour, bread crumbs, and suet.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk, molasses, baking soda, and vanilla.

  3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.

  4. Fold in the chopped almonds, walnuts, and orange.

  5. Add salt, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and mix until combined.

Steam and dry

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 5 hours.

  3. After steaming, dry off the pudding in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Fig + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the pudding hold together as it sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and aid rising.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must be kept up for the full five hours. Steam gently cooks the batter through without drying it out, and a long, steady steam sets the dense, moist crumb. Letting the water boil dry or the pot run low causes uneven cooking.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, sugar, flour, bread, beef, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipes