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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, sugar, syrup, milk, dried fruit, spices, suet, flour, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, brown sugar, syrup, milk, raisins, currants, citron, brandy, suet, flour, eggs, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice, then mix well until all ingredients are fully combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  3. Cover the mold with a lid or parchment paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 4 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 firm as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and soft body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter and give the pudding structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 4 hours. Steam provides gentle, even heat that cooks the egg and starch-thickened batter through without drying it. Cutting the time short leaves the centre wet and under-set, while the water level must be kept up so the pudding does not scorch or dry out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, syrup, milk, raisin, brandy, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, syrup, milk, raisin, brandy, 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.

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