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Dessert

A Common Plum-pudding

A traditional plum pudding made with suet, flour, raisins, currants, spices, egg, milk, wine or rum, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Common Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the shredded suet, flour, raisins, currants, allspice, nutmeg or cinnamon.

  2. Thin the mixture with the beaten egg and a little milk.

  3. Add the sweet wine or rum/brandy and sugar to taste.

  4. Mix well until combined and pour into a pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam or boil the pudding 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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Shredded suet
Melts during steaming, adding richness and a moist, tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure, setting the pudding as the egg and steam firm it.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a cohesive pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture, plus moisture from their fruit.
Currants
Add tart fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steaming gently and for long enough sets the egg and flour and melts the suet evenly. Lifting the lid too early or boiling too hard can leave the centre undercooked or the pudding unevenly textured.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, allspice, nutmeg, egg, milk, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, allspice, nutmeg, egg, milk, wine. 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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