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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread crumbs, flour, brown sugar, apples, candied peel, suet, raisins, currants, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, mix the stale bread crumbs, flour, brown sugar, chopped apples, candied peel, ground ginger, and salt.

  2. Add the finely chopped suet, pitted raisins, cleaned currants, and chopped almonds to the mixture and combine well.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a well-greased basin and cover it with a cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding for four hours.

  3. Serve with brandy or sweet 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Apple + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding its body and crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture so it holds together when cooked.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for four hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady simmer for the full time, because the long, gentle heat cooks the dense mixture through and sets its texture. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave it heavy or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, sugar, apple, ginger, raisin, almond. 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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