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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, spices, suet, candied lemon, raisins, currants, molasses, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine flour, spices, suet, nutmeg, candied lemon, raisins, molasses, cream of tartar, sweet milk, currants, baking soda, brown sugar, and salt in a large bowl, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the mixture to help the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to lift the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give a deeper flavor.

Swap the currant

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

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

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