Skip to main content
Dessert

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, currants, raisins, sugar, butter, candied lemon, eggs, apple sauce or milk, lemon peel, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Rub the butter into the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the currants, raisins, sugar, candied lemon, and spices.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix them into the mixture.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 12 hours.

  5. After standing, add the apple sauce or milk.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and boil for 3 hours.

  2. Allow it to stand in the water for a while before turning it out of the mold.

  3. Serve with cream or butter 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

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

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 structure as the pudding sets when boiled.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and absorb moisture from the other ingredients.
Butter
Adds richness and softness to the crumbs.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a moist, dark texture.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand for 12 hours. The crumbs need time to soak up the liquid and the eggs and fruit need to distribute evenly. Skipping this rest leaves a loose, unevenly set pudding.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, sugar, butter, lemon, egg, apple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, butter, lemon, egg, apple. 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.

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes