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Dessert

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

A baked pudding made with nuts, dried fruit, breadcrumbs, flour, eggs, milk, sugar, candied peel, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Vegetarian Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Boil the mold in water until the pudding is cooked through.

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. Brazil nut + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brazil nut + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Brazil nut + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 set as they cook, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Flour
Provides starch that thickens with heat and gives the pudding body.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and add bulk, giving a softer, tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter cook into a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture as their sugars soften during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the mold in water until the pudding is cooked through. The pudding cooks slowly in surrounding water, and egg proteins set gently with sustained, even heat. A vigorous boil or water running low can leave the outside overcooked and the centre underdone.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brazil nut, raisin, flour, egg, sugar, 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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