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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding of grated bread soaked in milk, enriched with eggs, butter, dried fruit, citron and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the ingredients a day in advance and cover them closely.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it hot over the grated bread; cover and let steep for 1 hour.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the butter, sugar, spices, and citron into the bread mixture after it has steeped.

  2. Add the white wine and stir well.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and gradually stir them into the mixture once it is cool.

  4. Dredge the raisins and currants with flour, then fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

  2. Serve warm with wine sauce or a mixture of wine and sugar.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to give a soft crumb.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the pudding sets tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Raisins and currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pockets throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps with browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the eggs. Hot liquid can scramble beaten eggs, leaving curdled flecks instead of a smooth custard-like set. Letting the mixture cool first keeps the eggs evenly blended so the pudding bakes uniformly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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