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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A baked dessert made from soaked crackers, milk, eggs, raisins, sugar, butter, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crackers overnight in 3 ½ cups of milk.

  2. In the morning, add 1 pint of milk, 5 eggs, 1 pint of raisins, 1 cup of sugar, a little salt, and nutmeg to the soaked crackers.

Bake

  1. Stir the mixture once or twice while baking.

  2. Bake for 4 to 5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cream together ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Pour the sauce over 1 glass of wine.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that moistens the crackers and forms the base of the pudding.
Eggs
Set as the pudding bakes, binding it into a tender, custard-like structure.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and the sauce, and helps with browning.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the creamed sauce.

The step that matters

Bake for 4 to 5 hours. Eggs set gradually as they heat. Long baking lets the custard firm evenly, while too much heat can make the eggs curdle or the pudding dry.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, sauce, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, butter, sauce, wine. 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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