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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, spices, milk, sugar, candied lemon, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and spices together in a bowl.

  2. Gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients and combine well.

Boil the pudding

  1. Dip a fine linen cloth in boiling water and place it in a sieve.

  2. Flour the cloth lightly and tie it up securely.

  3. Place the cloth in a saucepan with six quarts of boiling water.

  4. Keep a kettle of boiling water nearby to refill as needed.

  5. Boil for at least six hours.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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, moist texture as it melts during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during boiling to give the pudding structure.
Flour
Provides structure by setting with the eggs and bread crumbs as the pudding cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and help give the pudding a light, moist body.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy texture while sweetening the pudding.
Malaga raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the cloth fully submerged and the water boiling. Steaming in a tied cloth needs steady, continuous boiling water. If the water drops or stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy, so the kettle is kept ready to top up.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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