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Dessert

Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine suet, raisins, molasses, buttermilk, and baking soda.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter is very stiff and a spoon stands up in it.

  3. Season with nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon to taste.

  4. Steam the mixture for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together sugar and butter until light.

  2. Season the sauce with brandy and nutmeg.

  3. When ready to serve, pour the boiling water over the pudding.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to lift the batter as it cooks.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together while steaming.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to make a rich, smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to a very stiff batter. Flour must be added gradually until a spoon stands upright in the batter. Too little flour leaves a loose batter that can turn soggy and collapse during steaming, while the right stiffness gives a firm, sliceable pudding.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, molasses, buttermilk, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, molasses, buttermilk, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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