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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, spices, and eggs, sweetened with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, bread crumbs, and flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped citron, spices, suet, melted butter, brandy, sugar, and eggs.

  3. If the mixture is not stiff enough, add more bread crumbs.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 4 hours without stopping.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture body, so it can be stiffened if needed.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the pudding structure.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 hours without stopping. Steady boiling cooks the pudding through evenly. If the water level drops or the boil stops, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn heavy or soggy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, brandy, bread, butter, cinnamon, clove, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, brandy, bread, butter, cinnamon, clove, flour. 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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