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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, lemon and citron peel, suet, brown sugar, bread crumbs, spices, eggs, and grape juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Chop the raisins and cut the lemon and citron peels into thin slices.

  2. Remove the membrane from the suet and chop it finely.

Mix the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and spices.

  2. Add the brown sugar to the sifted mixture.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs, suet, and chopped fruit.

  4. Mix well, then add the grape juice and beaten eggs.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into three well-greased molds and cover them.

  2. Steam for 4 hours; if cooking in one large mold, steam for 6 hours.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding body and a tender crumb.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the mixture to lighten the pudding as it steams.

The step that matters

Steaming time for the mold size. Steaming for the correct time, 4 hours in three molds or 6 hours in one large mold, lets the center cook fully. A larger mold holds more mass, so it needs longer heat to set through without drying the edges.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, bread, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove. 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 →

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