Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Plum Puddings Without Suet

A moist plum pudding made with bread crumbs, raisins, currants, candied orange, and eggs, baked without suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Plum Puddings Without Suet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling milk over bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in butter while warm and let cool.

  3. Once cool, beat until smooth.

  4. Gradually add raisins, currants, sugar, candied orange, lemon rind, salt, nutmeg, and brandy.

  5. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Turn out and serve dusted with sugar, with cream, custard, or sauce.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to hold the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy, concentrated fruit flavor.
Currants
Add tart fruitiness and small pockets of chew throughout.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warm flavor that carries through the baked pudding.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs until well combined. Eggs must be evenly dispersed so they set uniformly during baking; unmixed pockets can leave the pudding streaky or uneven in texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, butter, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon. 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

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes