Skip to main content
Dessert

Duchesse Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, raisins, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Duchesse Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the bread crumbs with the boiling water.

  2. In a large bowl, beat together the softened bread crumbs, cinnamon, butter, molasses, egg, raisins, flour, and baking soda until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for two hours.

  2. Serve with Duchesse Pudding 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the boiling water and form the soft, moist body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, moist texture.
Egg
Binds the batter so it holds together after steaming.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the pudding hold its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.

The step that matters

Pouring into the greased mold. The batter is wet and sticky, so a well-greased mold keeps the pudding from sticking and helps it release cleanly after steaming.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, molasses, egg, raisin, flour. 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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes