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Dessert

Devonshire Rum Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made with plum pudding, milk, cornflour, egg, sugar, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and rum work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Devonshire Rum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pie dish and fill it with strips of plum pudding in a lattice pattern.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the cornflour smoothly with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk.

  3. Add the blended cornflour.

  4. Cook gently for 3 minutes.

  5. Stir in the sugar.

  6. Beat in the egg.

  7. Add the rum.

Bake and steam

  1. Pour the sauce over the plum pudding.

  2. Bake gently at 300°F (150°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Steam the pudding in a basin 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. Plum + rumtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

  2. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Plum pudding
Forms the body of the dish and supplies the rich fruit flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and richness.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with gentle heat.
Egg
Sets with the heated milk to give the custard body and richness.
Rum
Adds a strong aroma and distinctive flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Blend the cornflour with cold milk before adding it. Cornflour dropped into hot liquid clumps as its starch grains swell on the outside before they can disperse. Mixing it smoothly with a little cold milk first lets the grains separate, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, rum. 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.

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