Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Plum-pudding Op Fresh Fruit
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Roll out the suet crust to about ½ inch thick and line a pudding basin with it.
Fill the basin with the plums and add the sugar on top.
Cover the fruit with more crust, folding the edges over and pinching them together to seal.
Boil and serve
Tie a floured cloth over the basin and place it in boiling water.
Boil for 2 to 2½ hours.
Turn the pudding out of the basin and serve immediately.
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.
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Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,313 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Suet crust
- Its fat makes the pastry tender and rich while it cooks and forms the pudding's outer structure.
- Plums
- The fruit releases juice as it cooks, adding moisture and a tart flavour to the filling.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and helps keep the filling moist and flavourful.
The step that matters
Sealing the crust edges. Pinching the edges tightly seals the filling in and keeps boiling water out during the long cook. Gaps let juice escape or water seep in, leaving the pudding soggy or leaking.
“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.
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