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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, currants, flour, brown sugar, citron, eggs, nutmeg, wine, brandy, sweet milk, baking powder, served with butter‑sugar‑cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, suet, currants, flour, brown sugar, citron, eggs, grated nutmeg, wine, brandy, sweet milk, and baking powder in a large bowl. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam the pudding for 5 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together butter and sugar. Add cream to the butter-sugar mixture and mix until smooth.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides the starch framework that gives the pudding its body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to the dark color and flavor.
Butter
Provides fat and richness that give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, egg, nutmeg, wine, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, egg, nutmeg, wine, brandy. 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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