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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, milk, eggs, spices, candied orange and lemon, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, milk, eggs, and spices. Mix well until all ingredients are thoroughly combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

  3. Cover and boil for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

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 help it set as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides bulk and structure to hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for three hours. Boiling gently at a steady level with the mold covered keeps the pudding moist and cooked through. If the water boils down or stops simmering, the pudding can dry out or cook unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, milk, egg, 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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