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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the suet, raisins, currants, flour, and sugar.

  2. Add the ground ginger, ground cinnamon, grated nutmegs, brandy, eggs, crumbled bread, and citron.

  3. Mix in enough milk to achieve a thick batter.

Steam the pudding

  1. Grease a double boiler with melted butter.

  2. Steam the pudding in the double boiler for 30 minutes per pound of weight.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together while it steams.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding's texture.
Stale bread
Absorbs moisture and liquid, giving the pudding a tender, light crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's depth of flavor.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding in the double boiler for 30 minutes per pound of weight.. Steaming gently cooks the dense batter through without drying it out. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and the pot covered maintains even moisture and heat, so the pudding cooks evenly from edge to center.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, flour, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, brandy. 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.

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