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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with molasses, suet, milk, dried fruit, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine molasses, chopped suet, milk, raisins, currants, citron, and bread crumbs.

  2. In another bowl, mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, baking soda, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until well mixed.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with burning brandy and a hot 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour to the pudding.
Suet
Provides fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together once steamed.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the texture and help it rise.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients and helps form a soft, cohesive batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until well mixed. Mixing until evenly blended ensures the baking soda and flour distribute throughout, so the pudding rises and sets evenly rather than in pockets.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, raisin, bread, flour, ginger, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, bread, flour, ginger, cinnamon. 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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