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Dessert

Plum Pudding Jelly

A gelatinous dessert made with raisins, currants, citron, chocolate, and orange juice, set in milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Seed the raisins, clean the currants, and slice the citron.

  3. Cover the fruit with 1 tablespoon of orange juice or sweet wine.

Make the jelly

  1. Scald the milk, add the sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  2. Melt the chocolate over hot water and mix it into the scalded milk.

  3. Dissolve the gelatine over hot water, strain it into the milk, and remove from heat.

  4. Let the mixture sit until it begins to thicken before adding the fruit.

  5. Gently stir until well mixed and the jelly is thick enough to hold the fruit.

Mold and serve

  1. Pour into a mold that has been rinsed with cold water and refrigerate to harden.

  2. Serve with whipped cream.

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

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

  2. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,128 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the milk mixture into a firm jelly that holds the fruit.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the gelatine sets into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves into the milk to balance the chocolate.
Chocolate or cocoa
Adds deep flavour and colour to the milk base.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness through the set jelly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit until it begins to thicken before adding the fruit. If the gelatine has not started to set, the fruit will sink to the bottom instead of staying suspended. Waiting until the mixture thickens lets the fruit stay evenly distributed.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, chocolate, milk, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, chocolate, milk, orange. 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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