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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, sugar, bananas, flour, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the suet, sugar, bananas, and wholemeal flour together.

  2. Add the boiling milk and cover closely.

  3. Let it stand for at least 1 hour.

  4. Add the eggs.

  5. Add a little more milk if the mixture is too stiff.

  6. Beat well.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a greased basin.

  2. Steam gently for about 1 hour.

  3. Serve with wine 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. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bananas
Provide sweetness, moisture and a soft, tender body to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Wholemeal flour
Forms the structure of the pudding, giving it body as it sets.

The step that matters

Let it stand for at least 1 hour. Standing after the boiling milk is added lets the flour and bran fully hydrate and swell, which softens the texture. Skipping this rest can leave the pudding gritty and uneven.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, 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.

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