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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, raisins, currants, suet, flour, eggs, mixed peel, brown sugar, nutmeg, brandy, apples, and milk or molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

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

  2. Add the beaten eggs, mixed peel, brown sugar, grated nutmeg, brandy, and chopped apples. Mix well and add a little milk or molasses to achieve a moist consistency.

Boil and serve

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

  2. Boil for 6 hours, or if prepared in advance, boil for 4 hours and then for 2 hours when ready to serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 into a firm pudding.
Bread crumbs
Provide body and absorb liquid, giving the pudding its soft, cake-like structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep molasses flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for the full time. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and starches through and gives the dense mixture its set texture. Stopping early can leave the pudding soft or doughy in the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

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