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Dessert

Rich Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, almonds, flour, bread crumbs, preserved citrus, spices, sugar, eggs, and brandy.

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

Rich Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone the raisins.

  2. Wash and pick the currants.

  3. Finely chop the beef suet.

  4. Finely chop the sweet almonds.

  5. Finely chop the bitter almonds.

Make the batter

  1. Mix raisins, currants, suet, almonds, flour, and soaked bread crumbs in a large bowl.

  2. Add chopped preserved citron, orange, and lemon peel.

  3. Add mixed spice.

  4. Beat moist sugar and eggs together until well combined.

  5. Stir egg mixture into pudding mixture.

  6. Add milk to achieve thick batter consistency.

  7. Pour brandy over fruit and spice mixture. Stir.

  8. Let sit for 3 to 4 hours.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie pudding mixture in a cloth.

  2. Boil for 5 hours.

  3. Turn pudding out onto a dish.

  4. Sift loaf sugar over the top.

  5. 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk to add moisture and a tender crumb to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together when boiled.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil for the full time; long cooking sets the eggs and flour into a firm, cohesive mass and cooks the suet through. Letting the water drop below a simmer would leave it dense and undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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