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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, flour, spices, eggs, candied peel, sugar, brandy, and cream.

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

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all ingredients well with the flour.

  2. Place the mixture in a cloth and boil it in a pot of boiling water.

  3. Keep boiling for 7 hours.

Serve

  1. Before serving, sprinkle grated loaf sugar over the pudding.

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. Nutmeg + orangetop 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

Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during the long boil.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set it as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor.
Brandy
Contributes aroma and flavor and helps carry the spices through the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep boiling for 7 hours. The pudding needs a steady, long boil to cook through evenly and set firm. Letting the water drop below a simmer risks a dense, undercooked center.

Swap the currant

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

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

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