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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, apples, suet, sugar, spices, and eggs, served with brandy sauce or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, mix currants, raisins, apples, loaf sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, mixed spice, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add suet, sugar, mixed peel, breadcrumbs, eggs, and milk.

  3. Stir until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a pudding mold, ensuring all salt is washed out of the butter.

  2. Fill the mold with the pudding mixture.

  3. Cover with paper.

  4. Tie with a cloth.

  5. Place the mold in boiling water.

  6. Boil for 5 hours.

  7. Turn out the pudding onto a napkin.

  8. Sprinkle the top with white sugar.

  9. Serve with brandy sauce or plain cream.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  4. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during long steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a light crumb.
Currants
Provide concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the mixture.
Lemons
Their peel and juice add aromatic brightness that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. The pudding must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full time. Long steady heat cooks the eggs and starches through, and a drop in water level or temperature can leave the centre dense or undercooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, raisin, apple, sugar, egg, milk, brandy):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, raisin, apple, sugar, egg, milk, brandy. 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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