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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, sugar, currants, raisins, orange peel, lemon, apple or carrot, eggs, milk, spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the currants, stone the raisins, and chop the orange peel.

  2. Grate the lemon rind and squeeze out the juice.

  3. If using an apple, peel and chop it finely; if using a carrot, grate the red part.

Make the pudding

  1. In a basin, combine all dry ingredients, including the apple, lemon rind, and juice.

  2. Beat the eggs, add the milk, and pour into the basin, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Butter a pudding basin or mold and pour in the mixture.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with custard or sweet melted butter 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and soft body of the pudding, absorbing the liquid as it steams.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the mixture hold together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and flavor development.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding must be covered tightly with buttered paper and steamed gently for the full time. Too little water or heat leaves it dense and undercooked, while letting the steam escape dries the surface.

Swap the currant

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

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

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