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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with suet, raisins, currants, mixed peel, sugar, nuts, breadcrumbs, mace or nutmeg, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. Roll the raisins and currants in flour before mixing.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the suet, raisins, currants, mixed peel, sugar, nuts, bread crumbs, and mace or nutmeg by hand.

  3. Add the eggs and milk, and mix well.

Steam

  1. Butter a 2-quart melon mold and pour in the mixture.

  2. Steam for six hours.

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 + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during steaming to add richness and keep the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb liquid to give it a soft, body-filled texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, cohesive pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, and give the pudding its chewy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the rich suet and dried fruit.

The step that matters

Keeping the steam steady for six hours. Long steaming cooks the pudding gently and evenly through. If the steaming water boils low or runs dry, the pudding can cook unevenly or dry out, so the heat must stay consistent for the full time.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, lemon, sugar, nuts, bread, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, lemon, sugar, nuts, bread, egg. 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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