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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, suet, currants, raisins, buttermilk, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine molasses, chopped suet, currants, raisins, and buttermilk mixed with baking soda.

  2. Add ground ginger, ground cinnamon, and nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Dust the currants and raisins with flour before adding them to the batter.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 4 to 5 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas and help the pudding rise.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

The step that matters

Dust the currants and raisins with flour before adding them to the batter.. Flour coating helps the fruit stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming, so the fruit is spread evenly through the pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, raisin, buttermilk, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, buttermilk, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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