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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, currants, sultanas, candied peel, flour, sugar, eggs, brandy, almonds, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and crumbs

  1. Boil a saucepan of water.

  2. Finely chop the beef suet.

  3. Wash the currants and dry them with a cloth.

  4. Spread the currants on a cloth and remove stones and stalks.

  5. Pick over the sultanas, removing stones if using raisins.

  6. Rub stale bread through a sieve onto kitchen paper.

  7. Cut mixed peel into small pieces.

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, chopped suet, and salt. Mix well to avoid lumps.

  2. Add bread-crumbs, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, and moist sugar. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Grate lemon rind and half a nutmeg into the bowl, along with chopped almonds.

  4. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add brandy. Combine with the other ingredients using a wooden spoon.

Steam and boil

  1. Sprinkle flour on a clean pudding cloth and lay it over a basin.

  2. Pour the mixture into the center of the cloth and tie it tightly with tape, or use a buttered mold with a cloth over the top.

  3. Once the water is boiling, add the pudding and boil for five 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. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Sultanas or raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for five hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil in the tied cloth so heat penetrates evenly and the mixture sets. If the water stops boiling or drops too low, the pudding can turn out heavy and under-cooked in the centre.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, brandy, almond, nutmeg, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, brandy, almond, nutmeg, sugar, flour. 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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