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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, sugar, citron, eggs, milk, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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. Chop the suet into a powder.

  2. Pour scalded milk over the bread crumbs and let cool.

Mix

  1. Add the chopped suet, salt, raisins, currants, sugar, citron, and beaten eggs.

  2. Mix in enough milk to achieve the right consistency.

  3. Add spices and brandy to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 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 set the pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the scalded milk to form the body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender texture as it melts during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning at the surface.
Raisins
Provide chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix in enough milk to achieve the right consistency. Bread crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so too little milk leaves a dry, crumbly pudding while too much makes it loose and slow to set. Adding milk gradually and judging the batter before baking helps the eggs set into a firm, even custard-like texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, sugar, egg, milk, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, egg, milk, brandy. 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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