Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, spices, milk, sugar, candied lemon, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and spices together well.

  2. Gradually mix in the milk.

  3. Add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Prepare the cloth

  1. Dip a fine linen cloth into boiling water and place it in a sieve.

  2. Flour the cloth lightly and tie it up securely.

Boil the pudding

  1. Place it in a saucepan with 6 quarts of boiling water.

  2. Keep a kettle of boiling water nearby to refill the pot as needed.

  3. Ensure it boils for at least 6 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender during long boiling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as the pudding cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape when boiled in cloth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and flavour develop.
Malaga raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full time. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starches through and keeps the cloth-wrapped pudding evenly heated. Water that drops below a boil slows cooking and can leave the centre undercooked and heavy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes