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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with currants, raisins, sultanas, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, spices, almonds, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine currants, raisins, sultanas, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, allspice, nutmeg, salt, and almonds.

  2. Add enough milk to mix the ingredients into a batter.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Boil and store

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding basin and cover with a cloth.

  2. Boil for six hours.

  3. If you want to store the pudding, remove the cloth, cover the top with fine sugar, and press down with your hand.

  4. Wrap the pudding in a clean cloth, then in brown paper, and tie it securely.

  5. Store in a cool place; it will keep for a year.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 during long boiling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and help give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly on its surface.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for six hours. The pudding must cook long enough at a steady boil for the batter to set through the centre. Keeping the water boiling and topping up as needed keeps heat even.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, sugar, allspice, nutmeg, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, allspice, nutmeg, almond. 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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