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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, milk, molasses, sugar, currants, raisins, flour, spices, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 and fill

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, milk, molasses, sugar, currants, raisins, flour, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, baking soda, and salt until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Cover the mold with a cloth and place it in a steamer.

  2. Steam for 3 hours, ensuring the water in the steamer is boiling and do not uncover the steamer during cooking.

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding as it sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a batter.

The step that matters

Keep the steamer water boiling and do not lift the lid. Steam is what cooks the pudding evenly. Lifting the lid lets steam escape and the water temperature drop, so the pudding cooks unevenly and may turn heavy or underdone.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, flour, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, flour, cinnamon. 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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