Name: Another Way to Make Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound stoned raisins; ¾ pound finely minced beef suet; 2 tablespoons flour; 4 tablespoons brown sugar; 7 well-beaten eggs; 1 grated nutmeg; a little pounded cinnamon; ½ pint brandy

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the raisins, beef suet, flour, brown sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, and brandy together until well combined.
Transfer the mixture into a cloth and tie it securely.

Boil

Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Beef suet: Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, moist texture.
Raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy body throughout the pudding.
Flour: Absorbs liquid and helps the mixture hold together while it cooks.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a molasses note to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for the full time. The pudding must cook for the full five hours in steadily boiling water. Boiling sets the eggs and flour into a firm, cohesive body, so cutting the time short can leave it soft or wet in the centre.

“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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Another Way to Make Plum Pudding