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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with grated bread, suet, raisins, currants, citron, sugar, milk, nutmeg, eggs, salt, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine grated bread and boiling milk in a large bowl.

  2. Let it sit to absorb the milk.

  3. Add suet, raisins, currants, citron, sugar, grated nutmeg, eggs, salt, wine, and brandy. Mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil the pudding in a large pot of water for 6 hours.

  3. Serve with your choice of 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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 the pudding set firm when boiled.
Grated bread
Soaked in milk, it gives the pudding a soft, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the fruit and spices.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, milk, nutmeg, egg, wine. 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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