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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, flour, bread crumbs, dried fruit, spices, brandy, and eggs.

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

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped suet, flour, and bread crumbs.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, candied peel, baking powder, salt, and spices.

  3. Pour in the brandy and add the beaten eggs; mix thoroughly.

Prepare the cloth or mold

  1. Prepare a well-floured pudding cloth or a well-buttered mold.

  2. Place the mixture into the cloth or mold and secure it.

Boil and reheat

  1. Boil the pudding for 10 to 12 hours, ensuring constant boiling.

  2. To reheat, steam the pudding.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during cooking to keep the pudding rich and moist.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set its structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the dense mixture slightly.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds a warm, strong aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 10 to 12 hours, ensuring constant boiling. The pudding is dense, so heat must reach its centre slowly and steadily. Keeping the water at a constant boil cooks it evenly. If the boil drops, the pudding can turn heavy, soggy, or undercooked in places.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, bread, raisin, lemon, nutmeg, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, bread, raisin, lemon, 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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