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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, eggs, spices, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, raisins, currants, bread crumbs, and flour.

  2. Add the eggs, grated nutmeg, ground mace, ground cinnamon, salt, and milk, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for several hours until cooked through.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it steams, giving the pudding structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps hold the pudding together.
Currants
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy fruitiness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for several hours until cooked through. Steaming gently and for a long time lets the eggs and starch set evenly while the suet melts without the pudding drying out. Stopping early leaves the centre undercooked and dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, egg, nutmeg, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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