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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A traditional British dessert made with bread, milk, eggs, sugar, molasses, suet, spices, dried fruit, and citron, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread; let it stand for 1 hour.

  2. Stir in the sugar, spices, suet, raisins, and currants.

  3. Beat the eggs until frothy and mix them in.

Bake or steam and serve

  1. Butter a deep earthen pot and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Bake for 4 hours or steam for 5 hours.

  3. Serve with rich wine 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 the pudding sets.
Bread
Soaked in hot milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body.
Suet
Adds fat that contributes richness and a tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, moisture and a dark color.

The step that matters

Bake for 4 hours or steam for 5 hours. Long, gentle heat is needed for the eggs and bread to set through the dense batter without drying or curdling at the edges. Cooking too briefly leaves the center wet and unset.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, molasses, cinnamon, clove. 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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