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Dessert

Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the chopped suet with the dry ingredients: currants, raisins, nutmeg, candied peel, ginger, bread crumbs, and flour.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and milk until well combined.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add a little more milk.

Boil and serve

  1. Press the mixture into a pudding mold and cover it with a cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for at least 5 hours.

  3. Serve with brandy 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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + raisintop 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 mixture and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds its shape when cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the crumbs and flour into a spoonable batter.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for at least 5 hours. Long, gentle cooking in water is needed to set the eggs and starches through the dense mixture. Stopping early can leave the center wet and under-set, and the water must be kept at a steady simmer so the pudding cooks evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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