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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, fruits, spices, eggs, and brandy, boiled and steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix together the bread crumbs, flour, suet, and sugar.

  2. Add the fruits, spices, and salt.

  3. Incorporate the beaten eggs and finally add the brandy.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture for 6 hours, then steam for an additional 2 hours before serving.

  2. Serve with hard 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 add structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body.
Flour
Adds structure to help hold the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.
Currants
Provide sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 6 hours, then steam for an additional 2 hours. Long, gentle cooking in water or steam sets the eggs and softens the suet and crumbs so the pudding is cooked through and holds together. Letting the water boil dry or cooking too briskly can scorch the bottom or leave the pudding uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, ginger, mace, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, ginger, mace, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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