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Dessert

Boiled Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with milk, molasses, suet, raisins, baking soda, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, molasses, chopped suet, raisins, baking soda, flour, and grated nutmeg. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with a 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist as it cooks.
Molasses
Contributes sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the batter into a pourable mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 3 hours. The mold must stay covered and secured, and the water must keep boiling, so the pudding cooks through evenly. Water that stops simmering or leaks in can leave the pudding dense or soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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