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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, suet, sugar, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, mixed peel, whiskey, milk, baking powder, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, beat the eggs.

  2. Add the suet, sugar, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, mixed peel, whiskey, milk, baking powder, and spices. Mix well until combined.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture is a stiff batter.

  4. Flour the fruit before adding to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for several hours until cooked through.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 they set during steaming.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a stiff batter that holds the fruit in place.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its browned, rich flavor.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steaming gently and for long enough sets the egg and flour structure all the way through. Lifting the lid or rushing the heat can leave the center wet and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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