Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with raisins, currants, candied fruit, suet, and spices, served with sauce.

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

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the brandy, then pour this mixture over the dry ingredients.

  3. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pack the mixture into greased molds.

  2. Boil the molds for 6 hours at the time of making.

  3. When ready to serve, boil again for another 6 hours.

  4. Serve with hard sauce or 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavour.
Flour
Forms the body of the pudding together with the bread crumbs.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture of the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the molds for 6 hours at the time of making. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starch through and sets the dense mixture. Let the water drop too low and the pudding will be heavy and undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, nutmeg, sugar, lemon, flour, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes