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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, suet, molasses, spices, and fortified with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Dredge the raisins, currants, and citron thoroughly with flour.

Mix and steam

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, eggs, bread crumbs, suet, molasses, milk, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, mace, brandy, and sherry.

  2. Add the dredged fruit to the mixture and combine well.

  3. Steam the mixture for 4 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot or cold 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 as they set during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding a soft, body-filled texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol carries spice flavors through the batter.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit with flour. Flour coating helps keep the heavy raisins, currants, and citron suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, bread, molasses, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, bread, molasses, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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