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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, sugar, currants, plums, suet, candied peel, eggs, milk, baking powder, and optional spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil a large saucepan of water.

  2. Grease pudding basins thoroughly with cold dripping.

Make the batter

  1. Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl.

  2. Mix all moist ingredients in another bowl.

  3. Combine the dry and moist mixtures.

  4. Pour the mixture into the greased basins.

  5. Cover the basins.

Steam and serve

  1. Boil for 2 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Plum + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure once the batter is set by heat.
Bread crumbs
Adds body and absorbs the moist ingredients to give a softer, tender texture.
Beef or mutton suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes lighter.

The step that matters

Boil for 2 hours. The pudding must cook through gently in steam over a long period. Boiling water must be kept at a steady simmer, and the basins must stay covered, so the batter sets evenly without drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, sugar, plum, beef, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, sugar, plum, beef, egg, milk. 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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