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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, currants, sultanas, candied peel, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, brandy, almonds, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and crumbs

  1. Boil a saucepan of warm water.

  2. Chop the beef suet finely after removing the skin.

  3. Wash the currants, then dry them with a cloth. Check the currants for stones by dropping them onto a plate.

  4. Pick over the sultana raisins, stone them if large.

  5. Sift the bread crumbs through a wire sieve.

  6. Chop the mixed peel into small pieces.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, chopped suet, and salt. Mix in the bread crumbs, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, sugar, eggs, milk, and brandy. Stir in the almonds and grated nutmeg.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth and tie it securely. Boil in the saucepan for about five 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it structure as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour of the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil in the saucepan for about five hours. The pudding must stay submerged in gently boiling water for the whole cooking time. If the water boils dry or drops to a low simmer, the pudding cooks unevenly and turns heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, lemon, orange, bread, flour, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

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

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