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Dessert

Plain Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, carrot, orange rind, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plain Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, suet, sultanas, currants, mixed peel, sugar, nutmeg, salt, egg, baking powder, carrot, and orange rind.

  2. Mix well and add enough milk to moisten the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold and secure it tightly.

  2. Boil in a large pot of water for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with Sweet Sauce.

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. Carrot + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding as it sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Egg
Binds the dry ingredients together and helps the pudding hold its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pudding and helps it rise.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the pudding cloth or mold. If the cloth or mold is not sealed tightly, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and diluting its flavor.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, carrot, orange, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg, carrot, orange, milk. 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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