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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, sugar, currants, raisins, bread, eggs, spices, and served with a sugared butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the suet, sugar, currants, raisins, soaked bread, beaten eggs, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg until thoroughly combined.

  2. Take a square piece of cotton cloth and dip it in scalding hot water.

  3. Flour the cloth well and lay it over a pan.

  4. Place the pudding mixture in the center of the cloth and tie it closely.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Put the tied pudding in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Boil for five hours, adding boiling water as needed to maintain the heat.

  3. Cream together the sugar and butter for the sauce.

  4. In a separate pot, scald the flour with boiling water.

  5. Mix the scalded flour into the creamed sugar and butter.

  6. Flavor the sauce to your taste.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during boiling, keeping the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Soaked bread
Adds moisture and body, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pudding as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling for five hours. The pudding cooks gently in steam-heated water over a long time. If the water level drops or the heat fades, the pudding can cook unevenly and turn heavy, so the water must be topped up with boiling water as needed.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, bread, egg, nutmeg, sauce, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, bread, egg, nutmeg, sauce, butter. 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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