Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, citron, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, molasses, eggs, sweet milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, raisins, currants, and citron.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, flour, sugar, molasses, eggs, and sweet milk.

  3. Mix in the nutmeg, cinnamon, and mace until well combined.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil or 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give the pudding structure.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a softer, tender crumb to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for 4 hours. Steady, gentle heat cooks the eggs and starch through evenly without drying the pudding. Letting the water boil dry or cooking too hot can leave the pudding dense or scorched at the edges.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, sugar, molasses, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, molasses, egg, 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 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes