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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, citron, currants, suet, brown sugar, milk, flour, and baking soda, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, citron, currants, suet, brown sugar, milk, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold and secure tightly.

  3. Boil in a large pot of water for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine sugar and boiling water in a saucepan. Add butter and flour, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add brandy and wine to taste before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starchy structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Currants
Provide concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the pudding cloth or mold. If the cloth or mold is not sealed tightly, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and diluting its flavour.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, milk, flour, sauce, butter, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, milk, flour, sauce, butter, 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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