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Dessert

Pounp Plum Pupping

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, sugar, citrus peel, nutmeg, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pounp Plum Pupping

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the suet finely and mix it with the currants and raisins.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon peel, orange peel, and grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then stir them into the mixture.

  4. Finally, add the brandy and mix everything well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 set during steaming to give the pudding its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, rich character.
Currants
Provide fruit flavor and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming until cooked through. Steaming must run long enough for the egg proteins to set fully through the dense mixture. Stopping early leaves a wet, unset centre, while the heat must stay gentle and steady so the pudding cooks evenly without drying out.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, lemon, orange, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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