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Dessert

Boiled Plum Pudding

A boiled pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, spices, milk, eggs, and optional brandy or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, sugar, suet, raisins, currants, and spices in a large bowl.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, salt, and baking soda.

  3. If using, add a few spoonfuls of brandy or wine to the wet mixture.

  4. Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly.

Cook the puddings

  1. Tie the mixture in two pudding bags or place in two molds.

  2. Boil or steam the puddings for 4 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

White bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Raisins and currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil or steam the puddings for 4 hours. Long, gentle, steady heat is needed to cook the eggs and set the crumb through the center. Water that boils dry or drops too low can leave the pudding dense or undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, milk, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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