Name: Baked Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 6 crackers; 1 quart milk; 1 egg-sized piece of melted butter; 5 eggs; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup molasses; 1½ pints raisins; spices to taste

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pudding

Soak the crackers in milk until soft.
Add the melted butter, eggs, sugar, molasses, and raisins. Mix well and pour into a baking dish.

Bake

Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers: Soak up milk to form a soft, bready base that holds the pudding together.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable texture as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Molasses: Adds dark colour and deep, slightly bitter sweetness that browns during baking.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinthe original
Figfits about as well
Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar, molasses. 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.