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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A sweet, spiced pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, spices, and eggs, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Steep the raisins in the brandy for a few hours.

  2. Add the citron, candied orange and lemon peel, grated rinds and juices, almonds, currants, suet, flour, brown sugar, bread crumbs, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, salt, and sherry wine to the raisins.

  3. Mix well and let it sit in a cool place for a day.

  4. When ready to boil, add the eggs and sweet cream.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 10 hours.

  2. Boil for an additional 2 hours before serving.

  3. Serve with any kind of sauce; whipped cream is excellent.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Add body and natural sweetness, and plump up when steeped in brandy.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Give the pudding bulk and help hold its shape as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the batter hold together during boiling.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for a long time. Boiling for the full long period gently cooks the eggs and binds the dense mixture into a set, moist pudding. Too little heat or time leaves it wet and loose, while the water must stay at a steady boil so it cooks evenly throughout.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, brandy, orange, lemon, almond, flour, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, brandy, orange, lemon, almond, flour, sugar. 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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