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Dessert

Best Sort of Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, breadcrumbs, spices, preserved citrus, sugar, eggs, milk, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Best Sort of Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, fine spice, preserved lemon peel, orange peel, citron, grated nutmeg, and moist sugar.

  2. Break in the eggs and stir well.

  3. Add the milk and brandy, mixing until combined. If the mixture is too dry, add a little more milk, but ensure it is stiff enough for a spoon to stand upright.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding for four 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dry ingredients combine into a batter.

The step that matters

Adjusting the milk. The mixture must be stiff enough for a spoon to stand upright. Too much liquid makes the pudding heavy and dense, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Adding milk gradually lets you reach the right consistency.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, lemon, orange, nutmeg, sugar. 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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