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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, suet, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, and flour.

  2. Mix well, adding more flour to dredge the fruit if needed.

  3. If desired, add grated orange and lemon peel.

  4. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 4 hours in a large pot of water.

  2. Once cooked, turn out the pudding and garnish with blanched almonds and sliced citron.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that melts during boiling, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the dry ingredients bind into a soft mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's browned, caramelized flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding needs a steady, gentle boil in enough water for the full 4 hours so the heat cooks it evenly through. Water that drops too low can leave the centre undercooked and dense.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, milk, 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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