Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with raisins, sugar, mixed peel, bread crumbs, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the raisins, sugar, salt, mixed peel, and bread crumbs.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk to the mixture and combine well.

  3. Butter a mold and fill it with the pudding mixture, then tie it in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mold in boiling water and boil for five hours.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a napkin and sprinkle the top with white sugar.

  3. Serve with Brandy Sauce or plain 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body and soft texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding's flavor develop.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and eggs so the batter holds together evenly.

The step that matters

Boil for five hours. The pudding cooks gently in boiling water, and the water must stay at a steady boil for the full five hours. Letting it drop lowers the heat, so the egg and crumb mixture may set unevenly or stay wet in the center.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, egg, milk, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, egg, milk, butter. 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 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes