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Dessert

Teacup Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, sugar, flour, suet, breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, and flavored with lemon, nutmeg, or brandy.

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 ↓

Teacup Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone raisins and wash and dry currants.

  2. Chop suet finely.

  3. Mix all dry ingredients together.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Bind mixture with eggs and enough milk to right consistency.

  2. Flavor with lemon, nutmeg, or brandy to taste.

  3. Tie cloth over pudding and steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Let stand 5 minutes before turning out.

  2. Serve with arrowroot or wine 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 help set the pudding as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, crumbly body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning and flavor.

The step that matters

Binding with eggs and milk. Too much milk makes the pudding loose and heavy, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Eggs set during steaming, so the batter should be stiff enough to hold together but still moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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