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Dessert

Economical Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with water, flour, raisins, molasses, baking soda, and butter, served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Economical Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine water, flour, raisins, molasses, baking soda, and butter. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together 1 teacup sugar and butter (size of an egg). Add the yolk of a well-beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg white and beat until well combined. Season with mace or nutmeg to taste.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk structure that sets the pudding's body as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the pudding and the sauce.
Egg
Yolk enriches and emulsifies the sauce; beaten white lightens it.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Beaten egg white traps air that gives the sauce lightness. Overbeating or deflating it by stirring too hard makes the sauce dense and flat.

“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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English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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