Skip to main content
Dessert

Sultana Plum Pudding

A fruit pudding made by boiling raisins, apples, peaches, figs, dates, bananas, prunes, and tapioca, then adding nuts, lemon peel, and citron.

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

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Sultana Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Boil the raisins, dried apples, dried peaches, figs, dates, and bananas in water for 30 minutes.

  2. In a separate saucepan, cook the prunes with the cinnamon for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the stones from the prunes.

  4. Mix the prunes with the other fruit.

Add the thickener and flavourings

  1. Boil the tapioca in water until clear.

  2. Mix the tapioca with the fruit.

  3. Add the chopped nuts, lemon peel, and citron to the mixture.

  4. Allow the mixture to boil for an hour or more over low heat.

Mold and serve

  1. Wet a mold.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold as you would jelly.

  3. Serve on a layer of flaked rice or tapioca.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Apple + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Peach + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 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

Tapioca
Thickens the fruit mixture as it cooks, helping it set into a firm, sliceable shape.
Prunes
Add concentrated sweetness and a dense, soft body to the pudding.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture as they soften in the simmering fruit.
Bananas
Add soft body and mild sweetness, breaking down into the fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for an hour or more over low heat. Long, gentle cooking lets the tapioca fully hydrate and thicken the fruit, so the mixture can set when cooled in the mold. Too little cooking leaves it loose and runny.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, apple, peach, fig, dates, banana, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, peach, fig, dates, banana, cinnamon. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes