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Dessert

Susan's Plum-pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, bread, milk, eggs, nutmeg, sugar, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Susan's Plum-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stone and chop the raisins finely.

  2. Wash the currants in warm water, pick and dry them.

  3. Chop the beef suet.

  4. Soak the bread in warm sweet milk overnight.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Beat the soaked bread until fine, then mix in the raisins, suet, currants, eggs, nutmeg, sugar, and brandy.

  2. Put the mixture in a floured bag or pudding mold.

  3. Boil for four hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a cold sauce made of sugar and butter, flavored with wine and 2 teaspoons of lemon or vanilla essence.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds body and moisture to the pudding.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavor and chewy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for four hours. Long, steady simmering cooks the egg-and-bread mixture through and sets it into a firm, cohesive pudding. Boiling too hard or letting the water run low can make the outside tough or uneven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, sugar. 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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