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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A rich boiled pudding of dried fruit, beef suet, flour, eggs, sugar, spices and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and dry ingredients

  1. Chop the raisins on a paste board.

  2. Combine the raisins, currants, candied lemon peel, candied citron, and chopped almonds in a large bowl.

  3. Add the chopped beef suet, flour, biscuit powder, moist sugar, nutmeg, mixed spices, baking soda, and salt to the bowl.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, separating the yolks and whites.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the vanilla pod until it simmers.

  3. Remove the pod, mince it, and mix it with a little milk to form a paste.

  4. Return the vanilla paste to the milk and pour it into the pudding mixture.

  5. Stir well.

  6. Just before transferring the pudding to a basin or mold, stir in the brandy.

Boil

  1. Boil the pudding for eight 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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the pudding and add structure and richness as they set during cooking.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while helping the pudding brown slightly.
Raisins
Provide chewy sweetness and bulk throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the mixture to lighten the pudding's texture.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy just before transferring. Alcohol evaporates when heated, so adding brandy early loses its aroma. Stirring it in at the last moment keeps its flavor in the finished pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, almond, beef, flour, biscuit, 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.

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