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Dessert

Plum-Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, milk, flour, eggs, sweetmeat, brandy, nutmeg, and sugar.

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 batter

  1. Combine raisins, currants, and suet in a bowl.

  2. In another bowl, mix milk, flour, and eggs until smooth.

Make the pudding

  1. Add the fruit mixture, sweetmeat, brandy, and nutmeg to the batter.

  2. Add sugar if desired.

  3. Boil in a cloth for 4 hours, allowing room for expansion.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the pudding together after boiling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, chewy fruit flavour and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Allow room for expansion when boiling in a cloth. The batter swells as it cooks with the steam and the flour's starch gelatinises. Without room in the cloth, the pudding can burst or become dense and misshapen.

Swap the currant

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

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

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