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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, milk, molasses, sugar, currants, raisins, flour, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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, combine the suet, milk, molasses, sugar, currants, raisins, flour, cinnamon, cloves, mixed spice, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Cover the mold with a cloth and secure it.

  2. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for three 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep colour to the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter slightly.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in a pot of water for three hours. The pudding must be fully enclosed and kept at a steady boil so the water surrounds the mold and cooks the dense batter evenly. If the water level drops or the boil falters, the centre stays wet and the texture turns heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, flour, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, sugar, raisin, flour, 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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