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Dessert

Plum Pudding

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

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

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine suet, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, eggs, candied pineapple, almonds, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add the baking powder or baking soda and mix well.

  3. Gradually add milk until the mixture reaches a consistency similar to fruit cake batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased tin mold.

  2. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with hard 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. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender crumb.
Baking powder or baking soda
Produces gas that lightens the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk must be added gradually so the batter reaches a fruit cake consistency. Too thin and the pudding turns heavy and loose; too stiff and it cooks dry and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, raisin, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, 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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