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Dessert

Simple Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with flour, raisins, brown sugar, molasses, suet or butter, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Simple Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, raisins, brown sugar, molasses, suet or butter, eggs, and baking soda.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with cold sauce.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set it into a firm, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lift and lighten the pudding.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, sweet flavor.
Suet or butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while deepening the flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 2 hours. The pudding must cook long enough for the egg and flour proteins to set fully. Keep the water at a steady boil and top it up, so the pudding cooks evenly and does not turn out dense or wet in the center.

“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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