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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, sugar, currants, raisins, orange peel, lemon, apple or carrot, eggs, milk, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and flavourings

  1. Wash and dry the currants.

  2. Stone the raisins.

  3. Cut the orange peel into small pieces.

  4. Grate the lemon rind.

  5. Squeeze out the juice.

  6. If using an apple, peel and chop it finely.

  7. If using a carrot, grate the red part.

Mix the batter

  1. In a basin, combine all the dry ingredients, including the apple, lemon rind, and juice.

  2. Beat the eggs.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Pour into the basin, mixing thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a pudding basin or mold.

  2. Pour in the mixture.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Steam for 4 hours.

  5. Serve hot with custard or sweet melted butter 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape after steaming.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and fruit.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and feel lighter.

The step that matters

Pouring the mixture into the buttered basin and covering it. The basin must be well buttered so the pudding releases cleanly, and the buttered paper cover traps steam so the pudding cooks evenly over the long steaming time without drying out.

Swap the currant

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

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

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