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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A dense, sweet pudding made with bread crumbs, sugar, dried fruit, suet, nuts, eggs, and brandy, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, sugar, currants, raisins, suet, citron peel, chopped nuts, and grated nutmeg.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix with brandy and enough milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and cover.

  2. Boil for 8 hours in a pot of water.

  3. Serve with brandy sauce.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Nuts + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and soak up liquid to give the pudding structure.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil for 8 hours in a pot of water. The pudding must cook gently and steadily over a long time so the eggs and suet set through the center without the mold running dry. Water level should be kept up during the full boil.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, currant, raisin, egg, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, currant, raisin, egg, nutmeg, brandy. 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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