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Dessert

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, molasses, butter, milk, raisins, currants, eggs, spices, served with a sweet butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 ↓

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix together flour, brown sugar, molasses, butter, sweet milk, raisins, currants, eggs, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves until well combined.

  2. Tie the mixture loosely in heavy white muslin.

  3. Steam or boil the pudding for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, wash the salt from the butter with warm water and cream it.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until creamy.

  3. Flavor with vanilla extract and stir in boiling water.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 structure of the pudding as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when cooked.
Black molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender crumb and a creamy sauce.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the butter to give the sauce a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture loosely in muslin. The pudding needs room to swell as the baking soda and flour set, so a tight cloth can keep it dense and heavy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

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

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