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Dessert

Plum Pudding, Christmas

A steamed or boiled pudding made with raisins, sultanas, currants, sugar, flour, almonds, carrot, apple, butter, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash the raisins, sultanas, and currants in hot water to remove dirt.

  2. Rub the currants in a cloth to remove stalks.

  3. Stone the raisins.

  4. Combine the currants and sultanas in a basin.

  5. Just barely cover the mixture with water.

  6. Cover the basin with a plate.

  7. Place the basin in a warm oven to soak.

Mix and steam

  1. Mix the soaked fruits with sugar, flour, almonds, grated carrot, grated apple, butter, lemon rind, and nutmeg in a large bowl.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding basin.

  3. Steam or boil the pudding for 3 hours.

  4. Turn out the pudding.

Serve

  1. Serve with golden syrup, lemon sauce, or jam.

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

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

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the pudding body.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Cane sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Grated apple
Adds moisture and a mild acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sweet almonds
Adds richness and a nutty flavour with a little body.

The step that matters

Steam or boil the pudding for 3 hours. A gentle, steady steam keeps the pudding moist and evenly set. Boiling too hard or letting the water run low can dry out the edges or make the texture uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, flour, almond, carrot, apple, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, flour, almond, carrot, apple, butter. 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.

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