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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, eggs, currants, raisins, spices, lemon rind, and optional wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, beaten eggs, currants, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon rind.

  2. Add enough flour to achieve a thick batter and moisten with milk. If using wine or brandy, reduce the amount of milk accordingly.

Boil and serve

  1. Wet and flour a cloth, then place the mixture in the center.

  2. Tie the cloth securely and boil the pudding in water for 3 hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help give the pudding its set structure.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape inside the cloth.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and diluting its flavor. A well-wrapped, floured cloth keeps the pudding compact and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raisin, clove, cinnamon, flour, milk, lemon. 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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