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Dessert

Another Way to Make Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread, flour, sugar, spices, eggs, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly the day before boiling.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in a cloth or mold for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter or the following sauce.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat 2 to 3 tablespoons of sweet cream.

  2. Gradually mix in 2 well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of white wine, brandy, or rum, and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  4. Season with grated nutmeg and stir over heat until hot, but do not boil.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 help the pudding set as it cooks.
Fresh beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it steams.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy body throughout the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a lighter, more even body.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the pudding structure.
Rum
Adds aroma and flavor while helping the mixture stay moist.

The step that matters

Boil in a cloth or mold for 4 to 5 hours. Long, gentle steaming cooks the eggs and starches through and sets the pudding. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave it uneven, watery, or undercooked in the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, flour, sugar, ginger, cinnamon. 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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