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Dessert

Best Sort Op Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, spices, preserved citrus, sugar, eggs, milk, and brandy, boiled for four hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Best Sort Op Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, fine spice, preserved lemon peel, orange peel, citron, grated nutmeg, and moist sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Break in the eggs and stir well.

  3. Add the milk and brandy, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Ensure the mixture is stiff enough for a spoon to stand upright. Adjust with more milk if necessary.

Cook

  1. Boil for four hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during long cooking.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a soft, tender body to the mixture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a darker, richer color.

The step that matters

Check the mixture's stiffness before boiling. The batter must be stiff enough for a spoon to stand upright. Too much liquid makes a loose pudding that may fall apart or turn heavy, so adjust with milk only as needed.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, lemon, orange, nutmeg, sugar. 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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