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English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with eggs, suet, raisins, currants, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the eggs and lemon juice.

  2. Add the brown sugar, suet or butter, bread crumbs, Sultana raisins, flour, seeded raisins, sweet milk, currants, brandy or whiskey, pecans, citron, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, then mix all ingredients well.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into well-greased quart buckets.

  2. Steam the buckets for three to four hours.

  3. Serve with 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding steams and sets.
Suet or butter
Adds richness and moisture, giving the pudding a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides structure so the dense fruit mixture holds together when steamed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and soften the batter, adding body and moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Raisins and currants
Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the buckets for three to four hours. Steaming gently cooks the batter through without drying it out. The buckets must be well greased so the pudding releases cleanly, and the water should keep simmering steadily for even cooking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, beef, bread, raisin, flour, 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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