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Dessert

Good Family Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, flour, grated bread, suet, sugar, salt, egg, milk, optional wine or brandy, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the batter

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, flour, grated bread, chopped suet, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and enough milk to form a thick batter.

  3. Add the white wine or brandy and nutmeg if desired.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a cloth and tie the cloth securely.

  2. Boil for at least four hours.

  3. Serve with melted butter and a sprinkle of 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starchy structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the pudding a soft, tender body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Beaten egg
Binds the dry ingredients and sets with heat to hold the pudding together.
Raisins
Add natural sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness, tartness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling for the full time. Flour, egg and suet need long, steady heat to cook through and set. Boiling for less than four hours can leave the centre dense, heavy and undercooked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, bread, sugar, egg, milk, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, sugar, egg, milk, white wine. 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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