Skip to main content
Main

Good Family Plum Pudding

A fruit pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, almonds, flour, bread crumbs, candied fruit, spices, eggs, cream, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Good Family Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, almonds, flour, and bread crumbs, then add the candied citron, orange peel, lemon peel, nutmeg, mace, powdered sugar, and salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs, cream, mountain wine, and brandy until it reaches a good consistency, making sure it is not too thin to prevent the fruit from settling.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a dish or mold, or tie it up in a cloth.

  2. Boil for at least 4 hours or bake until cooked through.

  3. Serve with melted butter mixed with mountain wine and sprinkle with sugar.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquids and help give the pudding body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when cooked.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Get the moisture right before cooking. If the mixture is too thin, the fruit sinks and settles at the bottom instead of staying evenly distributed. A good consistency keeps the fruit suspended through the pudding as it cooks and sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, almond, flour, bread, 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 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes