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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, Jordan almonds, beef suet, flour, biscuit powder, moist sugar, nutmeg, mixed spices, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs, separating the yolks and whites, in another bowl.

  3. Heat the milk with the vanilla pod until soft.

  4. Remove the vanilla pod, mince it, and mix it with a little milk to form a paste. Return the paste to the milk.

  5. Add the milk mixture and the beaten egg yolks to the dry ingredients. Stir well.

  6. Just before pouring the mixture into a basin or mold, stir in the brandy.

Boil and serve

  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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starchy framework that gives the pudding its body.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the pudding.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and deeply flavoured.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 8 hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the starch and egg fully through, so the pudding sets firm and holds together. Letting the water drop too low or boil unevenly can leave the pudding undercooked or uneven in texture.

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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