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Dessert

Egoless Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, rye flour, raisins, baking powder, apple, molasses, milk, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Egoless Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Add the suet and chopped apple, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the molasses and milk, stirring constantly.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

  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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Rye + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together53 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Royal baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, giving the pudding lift and a light crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color and deep flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, helping the batter hold its shape.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually add the molasses and milk. Adding the liquids slowly while stirring constantly lets the flour and crumbs hydrate evenly. This prevents lumps and gives a smooth, uniformly textured batter.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, rye, flour, raisin, molasses, clove, milk):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, rye, flour, raisin, molasses, clove, milk. 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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