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Dessert

Baked Plum-pudding

A baked dessert made from stale bread, milk, dried fruits, spices, wine, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Baked Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare ingredients the day before and cover closely.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it hot over the grated bread; cover and let steep for 1 hour.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the butter, sugar, spices, and citron into the bread mixture once it has cooled.

  2. Add the white wine and beat the eggs until light; gradually stir them in.

  3. Dredge the raisins and currants with flour, then fold them into the mixture.

  4. Stir the entire mixture well and pour it into a buttered dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours and serve warm.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the pudding.
Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the hot milk to hold its shape.
Milk
Moistens the bread and provides liquid for the custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface.
Currants and raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and folding in the dried fruit. Eggs beaten until light trap air and help the pudding rise and set. Flouring the fruit keeps it suspended rather than sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, currant, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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