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Dessert

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

A steamed plum pudding made without eggs, using grated bread, suet, currants, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plum Pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, minced suet, flour, currants, brown sugar, and brandy.

  2. Add enough milk to form a stiff batter.

Cook

  1. Place the mixture in a cloth and boil for 4 hours.

  2. For baking, add stoned raisins and candied orange and lemon peel before baking.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 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

Grated bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to hold the mixture together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Currants
Add fruitiness and sweetness, with chewy texture in the finished pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavour that deepens the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and helps preserve the pudding.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, currant, sugar, brandy, milk, orange):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, currant, sugar, brandy, milk, 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.

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