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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, beef, dried fruit, citrus peel, eggs, and beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, beef steak, currants, raisins, brown sugar, and citrus peels.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the dry mixture.

  4. Add enough beer to achieve a suitable consistency and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered mold, allowing 1 inch for expansion.

  2. Boil for about 7 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

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

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 add structure as they set during cooking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Beef steak
Adds richness and fat that contributes to the pudding's moist, dense texture.
Light-brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a deep, caramelised flavour.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture through dried fruit.
Beer
Adds moisture to bring the batter to a workable consistency.

The step that matters

Allowing room in the mold. The pudding expands as it cooks, so leaving about 1 inch of space at the top prevents overflow. Buttering the mold well helps the pudding release cleanly once it is cooked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, egg. 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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