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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, milk, brandy, suet, flour, dried fruit, almonds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and dry goods

  1. Boil a saucepan of water.

  2. Finely chop the beef suet.

  3. Wash the currants and dry them with a cloth.

  4. Spread the currants on a cloth and remove any stones and stems.

  5. Pick over the sultanas, removing any stones if using raisins.

  6. Rub the stale bread through a wire sieve onto kitchen paper.

  7. Cut the mixed peel into small pieces.

Make the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, chopped suet, and salt. Mix well to avoid lumps.

  2. Add the bread-crumbs, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, and moist sugar, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Grate the lemon rind and nutmeg into the bowl, and add the chopped almonds.

  4. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add the brandy.

  5. Combine the egg mixture with the other ingredients using a wooden spoon.

Steam the pudding

  1. Sprinkle flour on a clean pudding cloth and lay it over a basin.

  2. Pour the mixture into the center of the cloth and tie it tightly with tape, or place it in a buttered mold and cover with a cloth.

  3. Once the water is boiling, add the pudding and boil for five hours.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 add structure as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Bread-crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender body.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps deepen the colour and flavour.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Currants
Supply fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for five hours. The pudding must be fully submerged in boiling water for the whole time. Steady, continuous heat cooks the batter through and sets it; if the water stops boiling or drops below the pudding, the centre stays wet and dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, brandy, almond, sugar, bread, beef):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, brandy, almond, sugar, bread, beef. 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

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