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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A traditional plum pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, eggs, spices, bread crumbs, flour, and milk, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the chopped suet with the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and milk until well combined.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add a little more milk to achieve the right consistency.

Steam the pudding

  1. Press the mixture into a pudding mold and tie it in a floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for 5 hours or longer.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during cooking to add richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, keeping the pudding light and moist.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Adjusting the consistency with milk. Flour and bread crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so the mixture must be judged by feel. Too dry gives a crumbly pudding; too wet makes it heavy and sodden after steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, bread, flour, milk. 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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