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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, sugar, bread crumbs, apples, lemon peel, cloves, eggs, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, powdered sugar, bread crumbs, apple slices, grated lemon peel, cloves, and salt.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the rum until fully combined.

Boil the pudding

  1. Butter a pudding mold and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Tie a cloth over the top of the pudding mold.

  3. Place a small baking sheet upside down at the bottom of a large pot filled with boiling water.

  4. Put the pudding in the pot and boil for 4 hours, replenishing the water as needed.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish.

  2. Sprinkle the pudding with powdered sugar.

  3. Pour warm rum over the pudding.

  4. Light the pudding before serving.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a soft, crumbly texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for the full 4 hours. Steaming a pudding for a long time needs steady heat. If the water drops and stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or doughy. Replenishing the water keeps the heat constant.

Swap the currant

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

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

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