Name: Small Light Plum Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pint fine bread crumbs; ¼ pint boiling milk; ½ pint suet, chopped extremely small; ¾ pint stoned raisins; 3 teaspoons sugar; 1 teaspoon flour; 3 eggs; a tiny pinch of salt; grated lemon peel or nutmeg to taste

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Small Light Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Combine bread crumbs and boiling milk in a basin.
Cover and let soak for 30 minutes.
Mix in the chopped suet, stoned raisins, sugar, flour, eggs, salt, and lemon peel or nutmeg.

Cook

Tie the mixture in a well-floured cloth.
Boil for 2 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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Bread crumbs: Soak up the boiling milk to form the body of the pudding.
Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist as it cooks.
Eggs: Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be well floured so the pudding does not stick to it. The mixture also needs to be sealed firmly so boiling water cannot seep in and make the pudding soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Datesfits about as well
Lemonthe original

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

Lemon Cake228 recipes

Bread Pudding153 recipes

Lemon Ice147 recipes

Lemon Sherbet103 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Small Light Plum Pudding