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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, currants, sultanas, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon rind, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the baking powder and salt with the flour. Rub in the butter.

  2. Add the currants, sultanas, sugar, grated lemon rind, a little nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Put the mixture in a buttered basin.

  2. Boil or steam for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with sweet 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets during cooking.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Sultanas
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 4 hours. Long, gentle, steady heat is needed to cook the egg and flour mixture through without drying it out. Water in the basin should be kept boiling or steaming throughout, since heat loss would leave the centre underset.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, lemon. 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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