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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, eggs, raisins, currants, ginger, flour, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, bread crumbs, eggs, ginger, flour, raisins, currants, milk, sugar, and spices, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or heatproof bowl.

  3. Cover tightly and steam for 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 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

Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to give the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it steams, giving the pudding firmness.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Helps thicken the batter and gives the pudding a firmer structure.

The step that matters

Covering and steaming. The mold must be sealed tightly so steam heats the pudding evenly and keeps it moist. If steam escapes, the pudding can dry out and cook unevenly, and water entering the mold makes it soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, ginger, flour, raisin, milk, 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.

More plum pudding recipes

English 165Christmas 156Sauce 71Eggless 34Baked 33Vegetable 19 See all 649 →

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