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Dessert

Mock Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, brown sugar, raisins, grated carrot and potato, flour, spices, and almond extract.

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 ↓

Mock Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, brown sugar, raisins, and optional shredded citron, candied orange, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the grated carrot and grated potato to the mixture.

  3. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then add to the bowl.

  4. Stir in the almond extract until well combined.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture for three 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist during long steaming.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together once steamed.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Grated carrot
Adds moisture and body to the pudding.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and body, helping the pudding stay tender.

The step that matters

Steam for the full three hours. Steaming gently cooks the batter through without drying it. Cutting the time short can leave the centre dense and wet, while the moist steam keeps the pudding from drying out.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, lemon, carrot, potato, flour, cinnamon):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, lemon, carrot, potato, flour, cinnamon. 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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