Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, dried fruit, flour, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Chop the suet and set aside.

  2. Wash and dry the currants, stone the raisins, and clean the sultanas by removing the stalks.

  3. Cut the mixed peel into small pieces and blanch and chop the almonds.

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and rub in the suet with your hands.

  2. Sprinkle in the salt, then add the bread-crumbs, currants, raisins, sultanas, sugar, mixed peel, and grated nutmeg. Mix well.

  3. Add the lemon zest, eggs, milk, and brandy. Stir until combined.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and steam for several hours until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  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

Beef suet
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it steams.
Flour
Gives the pudding its body and structure once steamed.
Bread-crumbs
Absorb liquid and add a light, soft texture to the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Provide chewy sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for several hours. The pudding must cook through gently over a long period so the eggs set and the dense mixture becomes tender rather than stodgy or undercooked in the centre. Keep the water topped up so the steam stays constant.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More plum pudding recipes

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes