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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fruit and stone the raisins.

  2. Roughly shred and chop the peel.

  3. Finely shred and chop the suet.

Mix and fill

  1. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs, add the milk, and stir into the dry ingredients.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered bowl.

  4. Tie over a floured cloth and place in a pan of boiling water.

Steam and serve

  1. Cook for 6 to 7 hours, or 3 hours if boiled in a floured cloth.

  2. When cooked, turn the pudding out and serve with melted butter or brandy sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to form a soft body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds together when turned out.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pudding and helps it rise.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie over a floured cloth and place in a pan of boiling water. The pudding must be sealed well so water cannot enter, and the water must stay at a steady boil so the pudding cooks through evenly during the long steaming time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg. 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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