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Dessert

A Boiled Plum Pudding

A boiled plum pudding made with suet, currants, raisins, eggs, flour, milk, nutmeg, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

A Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add 1 cup of milk and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour until combined.

  4. Add the suet, nutmeg, ginger, currants, and raisins.

  5. Mix in enough remaining milk to achieve a thick batter.

Boil

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 5 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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 add richness and structure as they set during boiling.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the pudding together and gives it a firm, sliceable texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and eggs to form a thick, pourable batter.

The step that matters

Mix in enough remaining milk to achieve a thick batter.. Too little milk leaves dry, stiff lumps of flour, while too much makes a loose batter that can turn soggy. The batter should be thick enough to hold its shape in the cloth or mold while it boils.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, flour, milk. 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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