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Dessert

John Bull's Own Plum Pudding

A rich, fruit-filled pudding made with suet, sugar, currants, raisins, sultanas, candied peel, flour, and eggs, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

John Bull's Own Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, mixed spice, sugar, raisins, candied peel, bread crumbs, sultanas, and currants.

  2. Beat the eggs and strain them for 10 minutes, then add the brandy and pour over the mixture.

  3. Stir until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Steam

  1. Butter four small bowls and fill them with the mixture.

  2. Scald a cloth, flour it, tie it over the bowls, and boil for 5½ hours (or longer for one large pudding, boil for 13 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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps give the pudding its dark colour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture of the dense mixture.
Flour
Provides body and helps hold the pudding together once steamed.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for the full time. Long, steady boiling cooks the dense mixture through and sets its texture. Cutting the time short leaves the centre wet and heavy, and the water must be kept topped up so the pudding does not dry out or scorch.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, bread, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg. 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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