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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, sweet milk, raisins, flour, and spices, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. In a large bowl, combine suet, molasses, sweet milk, chopped raisins, flour, baking soda, and spices. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and steam for 4 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat together sugar, butter, and egg until smooth.

  2. Add boiling water to the sauce mixture and stir to combine.

  3. Serve the pudding with the sauce drizzled on top.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main structure of the pudding as it sets during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender while it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for 4 hours. Steam must stay steady and the mold must be kept covered and topped up with water. Steaming gently cooks the batter through without drying it out or letting the outside overcook before the centre sets.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, sugar, sauce, butter, egg. 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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