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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A rich plum pudding made with raisins, currants, apples, suet, butter, stale bread, flour, eggs, whisky, wine, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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. Cream the butter and sugar together with a pinch of salt.

  2. Add half the milk to the egg whites and stir in the flour and grated bread.

  3. Mix in the butter and sugar mixture along with the egg yolks.

  4. Incorporate the minced suet and the fruits.

  5. Add the spices, wine, whisky, and the remaining milk.

  6. If the mixture is not stiff enough, add more flour.

Cook

  1. Boil or steam for four 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the pudding cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch that sets the batter and gives the pudding its body.
Stale bread
Soaks up the liquid and adds bulk and a soft, tender crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavor and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter brown and develop flavor.

The step that matters

Adding more flour if the mixture is not stiff enough. A batter that is too loose will steam into a heavy, wet pudding that may not hold its shape. Flour absorbs liquid and firms the mixture, so it should be stiff enough to hold together before cooking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, apple, beef, butter, bread, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, apple, beef, butter, bread, 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.

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