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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, milk, molasses, flour, spices, dried fruit, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, sweet milk, and New Orleans molasses.

  2. Add the flour, baking soda mixture, eggs, and salt, then mix well.

  3. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, fruit juice, figs, apple, orange rind, and juice.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover the pudding.

  3. Steam for 4 hours.

  4. Serve with sauce.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Molasses + raisintop 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

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give it structure as it sets.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and body throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 4 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the dense batter through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding heavy or undercooked in the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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