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Dessert

The Old English Cheisthas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, ginger, and eggs.

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 ↓

The Old English Cheisthas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, and chopped suet. Add the flour (or crumbled bread), sugar, lemon peel, mace, nutmeg, and ginger. Mix in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Boil the pudding

  1. Transfer the mixture into a cloth, tie it securely, leaving room for expansion.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for at least 5 hours, ensuring it continues to boil.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help give the pudding its set structure.
Flour or bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the pudding body so it holds its shape.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full cooking time. Steady boiling keeps the water hot enough to cook the pudding evenly through. If the water drops below a boil for long, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, lemon, mace, nutmeg, ginger. 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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