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Dessert

Cheap Plum Pudding

A suet-based pudding with molasses, sweet milk, raisins, flour, salt, baking soda, and egg, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cheap Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the chopped suet, molasses, sweet milk, seeded raisins, flour, salt, baking soda, and egg in a large bowl, and mix until well combined.

Boil

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for three to four hours in a pot of water.

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. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a deep flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm when cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to release gas that lightens the pudding.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the batter loose enough to mix.

The step that matters

Boiling for three to four hours. Long, steady cooking in water gently heats the batter all the way through, setting the egg and starch and cooking the flour. Stopping early can leave the center dense, wet, or undercooked.

“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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