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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, bread crumbs, sugar, brandy, sherry, eggs, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, and sugar.

  2. Add brandy, sherry, eggs, grated nutmeg, mace or cinnamon, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix well and add milk until the mixture is moist.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil in a large pot of water for 6 hours.

  3. Let cool before serving.

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. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 give the pudding structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Add milk until the mixture is moist. Bread crumbs need enough liquid to soften and hold together; too dry a mixture can crumble when boiled, while too much liquid makes it heavy and loose.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, brandy, sherry, egg, nutmeg. 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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