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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, carrots, potatoes, apples, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, nutmeg, and spice.

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. In a large bowl, combine the suet, grated carrots, grated potatoes, chopped apples, raisins, currants, sugar, flour, nutmeg, and spice. Mix well until all ingredients are evenly combined.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

  2. Cover tightly and steam for four 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  4. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 a moist, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding stay moist.
Carrots
Grated carrots add moisture and body to the pudding.
Potatoes
Grated potatoes add moisture and body to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and steam. A tight cover keeps the steam around the pudding so it cooks evenly and stays moist over the long steaming time. A loose cover lets steam escape, which can leave the outside dry and the centre underdone.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, potato, apple, raisin, sugar, flour, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, potato, apple, raisin, sugar, flour, 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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