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Dessert

An Excellent Plum-pudding, Made Without Eggs

A steamed plum pudding made with flour, raisins, currants, suet, brown sugar, mashed carrot and potatoes, treacle, candied peel, and served with brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

An Excellent Plum-pudding, Made Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour, currants, suet, and sugar together.

  2. Stir in the mashed carrot and potatoes.

  3. Add the treacle and lemon peel, but do not add any liquid.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie the mixture loosely in a cloth or fill a basin loosely to allow for swelling.

  2. Boil for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender, crumbly texture.
Mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, helping the pudding stay soft without eggs.
Mashed carrot
Adds moisture and body, helping bind the mixture without eggs.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.

The step that matters

Leave room for swelling. The mixture expands as it cooks and gains moisture from steaming. Packing it tightly in the cloth or basin can cause it to burst or cook unevenly, so it should be filled loosely.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, carrot, potato, lemon. 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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