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Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, fruits, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix together the bread crumbs, flour, suet, and sugar.

  2. Add the fruits, spices, and salt.

  3. Incorporate the beaten eggs and finally add the brandy.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 6 hours, then steam for an additional 2 hours before serving.

  2. Serve with hard 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Suet
Melts during the long cooking, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its structure.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets and gives the pudding body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add softness, helping the pudding hold together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol carries the spice notes.

The step that matters

Long, steady boiling and steaming. The pudding needs many hours of gentle, continuous heat so the eggs and starch set through and the suet softens. Letting the water boil dry or cook too hard can leave the pudding dense or cracked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, ginger, mace, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, ginger, mace, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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