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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, candied fruit, suet, flour, sugar, spices, eggs, milk, vanilla, brandy, and ale.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine raisins, currants, candied lemon peel, candied citron, almonds, suet, flour, biscuit powder, sugar, spices, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Heat milk with vanilla pod until soft. Remove the pod, mince it, and mix it with a little milk to form a paste.

  3. Return the vanilla paste to the milk and pour it into the bowl with the other ingredients.

  4. Stir well and mix in the brandy just before transferring the mixture to a pudding basin or mold.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding for 8 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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and tender as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and suet together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps deepen the flavor.
Raisins
Supply sweetness, chewiness and bulk throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic ingredients to help the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 8 hours. A long, steady boil cooks the dense mixture through evenly. Letting the water drop below a simmer can leave the center underdone and heavy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, almond, beef, flour, biscuit, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, almond, beef, flour, biscuit, sugar. 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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