Skip to main content
Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, stale bread crumbs, sugar, lemon rind, flour, candied orange peel, eggs, brandy, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the currants.

  2. Stone the raisins by pouring boiling water over them and letting them sit for 10 minutes.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the brandy, then pour this mixture over the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pack the mixture into greased small kettles or molds.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 6 hours at the time of making and again for 6 hours when ready to serve.

  2. Serve with hard sauce or brandy 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and moisture, and melts during boiling to keep the pudding tender.
Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and help set the pudding structure as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding a light, crumbly body.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold its shape after boiling.
Raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The long, steady boil cooks the eggs and starches through and sets the dense mixture. Letting the water drop to a low simmer or sealing the molds poorly can leave the pudding soggy or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, sugar, lemon, flour, nutmeg, egg. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes