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Dessert

Boiled Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with currants, raisins, suet, bread crumbs, citron, eggs, milk, wine, sugar, and nutmegs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine currants, raisins, suet, salt, bread crumbs, and citron.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add milk, wine, sugar, and grated nutmegs.

  3. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture last.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold and tie securely.

  2. Boil in a large pot of water for 6 hours, turning it several times during cooking.

  3. Serve with a sauce made of butter, sugar, and wine.

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. Currant + raisintop 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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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, with whipped whites, add lightness and structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Contribute fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the crumbs and keeps the batter loose.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold the whites in gently, last, so their trapped air is not knocked out. That air helps the pudding rise and stay light rather than dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, beef, bread, egg, milk, wine. 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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