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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with butter, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, spices, brandy, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs, raisins, currants, citron, spices, nutmeg, brandy, and baking soda until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam in a double boiler for 5 hours.

  3. Serve with hard sauce or whipped cream.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a rich, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its dense, sliceable crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps cream with butter to lighten the batter.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to help the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding in the mold. The mold must be greased and kept at a gentle, steady simmer under water for the full 5 hours. Steam heat cooks the batter evenly and sets it without drying, so the pudding stays moist and holds its shape.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, clove. 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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