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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, suet, and bread, flavored with nutmeg and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped suet and grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the raisins, currants, citron, and crumbled bread.

Cook

  1. Divide the mixture into four parts and place each in a small tin kettle or mold.

  2. Boil each part for 2 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 add structure as the pudding sets while cooking.
Baker's bread
Soaks up the egg and suet, giving the pudding body instead of a dense mass.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and adds to the pudding's tender, rich texture.

The step that matters

Dividing and boiling each part. The pudding must be sealed in its molds and kept at a steady boil for the full 2 hours. Water entering the mold or a drop in heat will leave the pudding soggy or unevenly cooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, nutmeg, egg, bread. 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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