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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, milk, raisins, flour, baking soda, egg, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, molasses, milk, raisins, flour, baking soda, egg, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the mold in a kettle of boiling water and boil for 3 hours.

  2. Serve 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color of the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and adds structure as the pudding sets.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for the full 3 hours. The pudding is cooked by steam and hot water over a long time. Cutting the boil short leaves the centre under-set and dense, and the water must stay at a steady boil so the heat stays constant.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, raisin, flour, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, flour, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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