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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, spices, milk, sugar, candied lemon, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and spices together well, then gradually mix in the milk.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Boil the pudding

  1. Dip a fine linen cloth in boiling water and place it in a sieve.

  2. Flour the cloth lightly and tie it up securely.

  3. Place it in a saucepan with 6 quarts of boiling water.

  4. Keep a kettle of boiling water nearby to refill the pot as needed.

  5. Ensure it boils for at least 6 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body to the batter.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter and gives the pudding structure.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture to the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full time. The pudding is cooked by steady boiling water surrounding the cloth. If the water drops below a boil, heat transfer slows and the pudding can turn heavy or undercooked. Refilling with boiling water keeps the temperature steady.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, 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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