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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with dried fruit, candied fruit, suet, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, lemon rind, spices, and brandy, served with custard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl several hours before boiling.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and tie it up in a cloth.

  3. Boil the pudding for 4½ hours.

  4. Serve with a German custard sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it steams.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding stay moist.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and body to the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, binding batter.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 4½ hours. The long, steady boil cooks the pudding through and sets its texture. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and topping it up as needed prevents the pudding from drying out or turning heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, orange, lemon, beef, flour, 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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