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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, beef suet, bread crumbs, apples, spices, eggs, milk, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, diced apples, ginger, cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, orange peel, and flour.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs with brown sugar.

  3. Add milk and brandy to the egg mixture.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the dry ingredients.

  5. If the mixture is too stiff, add more milk.

Shape and boil

  1. Butter the middle of a pudding cloth and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Place the cloth over a basin, pour in the pudding mixture, and shape it round.

  3. Boil water in a pot.

  4. Place the pudding in the pot of boiling water.

  5. Ensure the pudding stays boiling for 9 hours. Add boiling water as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with wine sauce poured around it.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, sturdy body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavor.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the pudding its structure.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for the full 9 hours. The pudding is cooked gently by steam and boiling water over a long time. If the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and stays heavy, so the pot must be topped up with boiling water as it reduces.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, bread, apple, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, apple, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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