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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, suet, sugar, raisins, currants, spices, and milk.

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

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough milk to form a very stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Turn the mixture into a well-greased basin.

  2. Boil for 6 hours or steam for at least 7 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding once it is set by cooking.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the milk and add body, giving the pudding a softer, lighter crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture to the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour, sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boil for 6 hours or steam for at least 7 hours. A long, gentle cooking time is needed so the stiff batter cooks through and sets. Keeping the water topped up and the heat steady prevents a soggy or undercooked centre.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, raisin, currant, nutmeg, milk):

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

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