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Dessert

Cottage Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, flour, stale bread, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cottage Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the suet, salt, currants, raisins, baking powder, flour, sifted bread, nutmeg, and sugar thoroughly.

  2. Add the eggs and enough milk to form a stiff paste.

Wrap and boil

  1. Wring a cloth out of boiling water and flour the cloth well.

  2. Turn the pudding mixture into the cloth and tie it securely, leaving room for swelling.

  3. Plunge the wrapped pudding into boiling water and boil for four 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.

  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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding once cooked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give it a set, firm texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.
Stale bread
Soaks up moisture and adds body to the crumb.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.

The step that matters

Leaving room for swelling. The pudding expands as the baking powder releases gas and the flour sets in boiling water. If the cloth is tied too tightly, the pudding is squeezed and can burst or cook dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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