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Dessert

Baked Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with rolled crackers, milk, eggs, sugar, spices, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fruit the day before: pick over and stone the raisins, wash and dry the currants, and slice the citron very fine.

  2. Pour the milk over the rolled crackers.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs until very light and add them to the mixture along with the sugar.

  2. Next, add the spices and butter, then fold in the prepared fruit.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for three hours.

Serve

  1. 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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 help it set into a custard-like pudding structure as it bakes.
Rolled crackers
Soak up the milk and provide the body that holds the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during long baking.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small, tart bursts of fruit flavour and chewy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing a tender crumb and moisture.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) for three hours. Long, low heat lets the egg and cracker mixture set gently without curdling or drying out. Too high a heat can make the eggs scramble and the pudding tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, milk, raisin. 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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