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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, sugar, flour, candied peel, brandy, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Mix the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, brown sugar, flour, mixed candied peel, brandy, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add mace, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, then mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 6 hours.

  3. Steam for an additional 2 hours 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor while helping preserve the pudding.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 6 hours. A long, gentle cooking time lets the eggs and bread crumbs set into a firm, cohesive pudding. Keeping the water at a steady simmer prevents the cloth from drying out or the pudding from turning dense and uneven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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