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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A rich, fruit-filled pudding made with suet, flour, spices, eggs, milk, ale, and brandy.

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. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, candied lemon peel, candied citron, almonds, suet, flour, biscuit powder, sugar, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then mix them into the dry ingredients.

  3. In a saucepan, heat the milk with the vanilla pod until soft, then remove the pod and mince it.

  4. Combine the minced vanilla with a little milk to form a paste, then return it to the milk and add to the pudding mixture.

  5. Stir in the old ale and brandy just before transferring the mixture to a basin or mold.

Boil

  1. Boil the pudding for eight 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add lift and structure as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chewy texture and body to the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for eight hours. The long, steady boil cooks the dense batter through and sets its structure. Letting the water boil dry or drop to a simmer can leave the pudding heavy or undercooked in the centre.

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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