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Dessert

Old English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, lemon peel, suet, eggs, flour, bread crumbs, sugar, spices, and spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Old English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, and lemon peel in a large bowl.

  2. Add the suet, eggs, flour, bread crumbs, sugar, nutmeg, ginger, lemon essence, and spirits. Stir until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover and steam for several hours until cooked through.

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor and color.

The step that matters

Steaming until cooked through. Steaming gently heats the mixture so the eggs and flour set without drying out. Cooking too briefly leaves the center wet and unset, while the long, moist heat is what turns the batter into a firm, cohesive pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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