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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, sour milk, eggs, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, sour milk, eggs, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon, and flour. Stir the ingredients well together.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a tin pail.

Steam

  1. Place the pail in a kettle of hot water. Boil for four 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. 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 and help give the pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and a darker colour.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the other ingredients.
Flour
Thickens the batter and adds structure to the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the pail submerged while it boils. Steaming in water heats the pudding gently and evenly, so it cooks through without drying out. If the water level drops or boils away, the pudding can dry out and cook unevenly over the long four-hour boil.

Swap the currant

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

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

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