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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, flour, suet, sugar, currants, raisins, candied peel, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Make the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, mix the bread crumbs, flour, chopped suet, sugar, currants, raisins, and candied citron, orange, and lemon peel.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little milk.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered bowl and steam for about three days.

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. Flour + raisintop 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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the pudding a light, crumbly body.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly.

The step that matters

Adding milk only if the mixture is too stiff. Bread crumbs and flour soak up liquid at different rates. Adding milk only when the mix is stiff keeps the batter loose enough to hydrate evenly without making the pudding wet and heavy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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