Name: Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 6 ounces raisins; 6 ounces currants; 6 ounces bread crumbs; 6 ounces suet; ½ nutmeg; a little lemon peel; 5 eggs; ⅓ cup brandy

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the raisins, currants, bread crumbs, suet, nutmeg, lemon peel, and eggs in a bowl.
Stir in the brandy until well combined.
Transfer the mixture into a mold.

Cook

Boil the pudding for 3 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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist.
Eggs: Bind the ingredients together and help the pudding set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, nutmeg, egg, brandy):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Applefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, nutmeg, egg, 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.