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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, sugar, dried fruit, spices, milk, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, salt, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and baking soda.

  2. In another bowl, mix the sweet milk and beaten eggs, then add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  4. Flour the fruit well before adding it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and steam for four 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

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 a moist, tender texture as it melts during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and help the pudding hold together as a soft, cakey structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding's structure as it steams.
Flour
Gives the pudding its main structure and holds the fruit in place.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the mixture to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's moisture and browned flavor.

The step that matters

Flour the fruit well before adding it to the mixture.. Coating the raisins, currants, and citron in flour helps keep them suspended evenly instead of sinking to the bottom of the batter as it steams.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, clove, 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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