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Dessert

Salford Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with butter, flour, currants, raisins, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, candied fruit, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Salford Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the currants, bread crumbs, raisins, lemon rind, beaten eggs, mace or nutmeg, sugar, candied orange or lemon, and salt.

  3. Mix in just enough milk to create a stiff batter.

Boil the pudding

  1. Place the mixture in a floured cloth and tie it securely.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

  3. Reboil in a clean cloth for 1.5 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the texture of the dense batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy body and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, rich flavour.

The step that matters

Keeping the cloth tied and the water boiling. The cloth must be tied securely so water cannot soak into the pudding and make it heavy. The boil must be kept steady across the long cooking time so the pudding cooks through and sets evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, currant, bread, raisin, lemon, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, currant, bread, raisin, lemon, 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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