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Dessert

Plum-pudding in the English Way

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, flour, sugar, dried fruit, spices, eggs, milk, brandy, and served with brandy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Plum-pudding in the English Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet and flour together well.

  2. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the raisins, currants, lemon juice, lemon rind, almonds, orange peel, citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and coriander seed.

  4. Add this mixture to the flour mixture and stir well.

  5. In another bowl, beat the eggs and then add the milk and brandy.

  6. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry mixture and mix until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare a buttered mold that can hold the mixture and pour it in.

  2. Cover the pudding with a buttered and floured cloth.

  3. Boil the pudding for 7 to 8 hours.

  4. Turn it out and serve with flaming brandy.

  5. Make a sauce of melted butter thickened with arrowroot, sherry, and sugar to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Suet
Adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture as it melts into the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, moist character.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy body throughout the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 7 to 8 hours. The long, gentle boil slowly sets the eggs and cooks the dense batter through. Too little time leaves it wet in the centre, and a rapid boil can break the cloth seal and let water in.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, lemon, almond, orange, 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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