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Dessert

Common Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, lemon peel, brandy, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Common Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried fruit for 1-2 hours before boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, and lemon peel.

  3. Add brandy, egg, and enough milk to create a thick batter.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter, white wine, and powdered sugar.

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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Mixed dried fruit
Supplies sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for 4 hours. The cloth must be tied loosely enough to allow the pudding room to expand, and the water must keep simmering so the pudding cooks evenly through. Too little heat or a tight wrap can leave it dense or undercooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, brandy, egg, milk):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, brandy, egg, 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.

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