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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A dense, sweet pudding made with suet, dried fruit, flour, and spices, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

  1. Chop the suet.

  2. Wash and dry the currants.

  3. Stone the raisins and clean the sultanas, removing the stalks.

  4. Cut up the peel and blanch and chop the almonds.

Make the pudding

  1. In a basin, combine the flour and rub in the suet.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

Cook

  1. Boil for 4 hours or steam for 5.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Gives the pudding body and structure once cooked.
Bread-crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a light, tender texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil for 4 hours or steam for 5. A long, gentle cooking time is needed so the suet melts and the eggs and flour set into a firm, evenly cooked pudding. Too short a time leaves it dense and undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, bread, flour, lemon, sugar, egg. 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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