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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, currants, raisins, sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, candy peel, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, flour, currants, raisins, sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, and candy peel.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with milk.

  3. Mix the egg mixture into the dry ingredients until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a basin and cover.

  2. Boil in water for 4 hours.

  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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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 cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in water for 4 hours. The pudding must be sealed in its basin and kept at a steady simmer so steam cooks it evenly through. Water that boils dry or drops too low leaves the centre underdone and the texture uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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