Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, currants, suet, raisins, orange peel, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Chop the suet.

  2. Seed the raisins.

  3. Wash the currants.

  4. Mince the orange peel.

Mix the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Mix all the ingredients together until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam in molds for 6 hours.

  2. When ready to serve, steam until thoroughly hot and serve with brandy 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 add structure as the pudding sets during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender body.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Boil or steam in molds for 6 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the eggs and flour through without drying the pudding. Letting the water boil dry or cooking too fast can leave the texture uneven or the mold damaged.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, orange, bread, lemon, sugar, egg, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, orange, bread, lemon, sugar, egg, raisin. 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 christmas pudding recipes

Sauce 4Cottage 4Apple 3 See all 175 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes