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Dessert

Small and Cheap Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, egg, flour, milk, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon.

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 ↓

Small and Cheap Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, egg, flour, milk, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Cook the pudding

  1. Boil or steam for 3 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. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and the dark color typical of plum pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the moist, tender crumb.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 3 hours. A long, gentle, steady heat is needed to cook the dense batter through to the center. Letting the water boil dry or drop to a low simmer can leave the pudding undercooked or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, molasses, egg, flour, milk, clove. 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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