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Dessert

Good Family Plum Pudding

A sweet, fruit‑laden pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, almonds, and spices, baked or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Good Family Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, almonds, flour, and bread crumbs.

  2. Add the candied citron, orange peel, lemon peel, nutmeg, mace, powdered sugar, and salt.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs, cream, mountain wine, and brandy until it reaches a good consistency.

  4. Ensure the mixture is not too thin to prevent the fruit from settling.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a dish or mold, or tie it up in a cloth.

  2. Boil for at least 4 hours or bake until cooked through.

  3. Serve with melted butter mixed with mountain wine and sprinkle with sugar.

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. Orange + lemontop 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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 add structure as the pudding sets during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Flour
Gives the pudding body and structure so it holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture of the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture from being too thin. If the batter is too thin, the heavy fruit will sink to the bottom instead of staying evenly distributed. Adjusting the liquid until the mixture is a good consistency keeps the fruit suspended throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, almond, flour, bread, orange, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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