Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, raisins, currants, sugar, suet, grated bread, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, raisins, currants, sugar, suet, grated bread, and eggs.

  2. Add citron, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves to taste, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil for 2 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Grated bread
Absorbs the milk and gives the pudding body and structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give a tender, browned crumb.
Milk
Moistens the bread and helps form a custard-like texture when set.

The step that matters

Pouring into the mold. The mold should be filled with room left for the pudding to expand as it cooks. Eggs and bread set as the mixture heats, so the batter needs space and a tightly sealed mold to cook evenly without leaking or swelling over the top.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, raisin, sugar, bread, egg, brandy, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, raisin, sugar, bread, egg, brandy, 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 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes