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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread, milk, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, suet, wine, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the stale bread in hot milk and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, add sugar and the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Stir in the floured raisins, washed and floured currants, floured citron, chopped suet, wine, brandy, and spices.

  4. Beat the mixture well and then fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a cloth dusted with flour, tie it securely, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  2. Boil for 6 hours.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites beaten to stiffness lighten it and help it rise.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the batter. Overmixing after folding in them deflates that air, leaving a denser pudding that does not swell well.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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