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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, breadcrumbs, candied peel, brown sugar, spices, flour, eggs, and boiled for hours.

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

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix all ingredients except the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  4. Prepare the pudding the night before cooking.

Boil the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold or basin.

  2. Boil for 10 hours.

  3. Add boiling water as needed.

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy, moist texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and a chewy, moist texture throughout the pudding.
Breadcrumbs
Provide bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding body and shape.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, along with a deeper caramel flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to hold it together.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling steadily. Long boiling cooks the pudding gently and evenly. Adding cold water instead of boiling water drops the temperature and slows cooking, so the top-up water should always be boiling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, nutmeg, flour, 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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