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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, milk, syrup, currants, nuts, citron, baking soda, eggs, spices, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, suet, sweet milk, syrup, currants, walnuts, almonds, citron, baking soda, eggs, spices, flour, and salt.

  2. Dredge the currants, walnuts, almonds, and citron with a little flour before adding them to the mixture.

  3. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 3 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding's structure during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit and nuts in flour. Coating the currants, walnuts, almonds, and citron with a little flour helps keep them suspended evenly in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, milk, syrup, walnut, almond, egg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, syrup, walnut, almond, egg, flour. 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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