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Dessert

Family Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, plums, currants, dried fruits, sugar, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Family Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the cow-heel by boiling it well and chopping it coarsely if using instead of suet.

  2. Mix the suet (or cow-heel) with plums, currants, and other dried fruits.

  3. Add sugar, flour, and spices to the mixture.

Fill and boil

  1. Fill a pudding casket with the mixture, placing a thin piece of cloth under the lid.

  2. Tie the lid securely with strong pack-thread.

  3. Boil the pudding for half the time on the first day and the remaining time on the second day, or warm through on the second day.

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. Plum + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Plum + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavour.
Plums
Contribute moisture and fruity sweetness to the pudding.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for half the time on the first day and the remaining time on the second day. Splitting the boil over two days lets the pudding cook through gently without drying out or breaking apart. Keeping the cloth and lid secure prevents water from entering while it simmers.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, sugar, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, flour. 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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