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Dessert

Common Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, lemon zest, wine, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine flour, suet, mixed dried fruit, spice, and lemon zest in a large bowl.

  2. Add wine if using, then mix in the egg and milk until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Cover the mold with a cloth and secure it tightly.

  2. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for several hours until cooked through.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding until cooked through. The pudding is cooked by steady simmering water, so the mold must stay submerged and the water kept at a gentle boil for the full time. Stopping early leaves the centre raw and dense, since the egg and flour need sustained heat to set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, wine, 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.

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