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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, figs, citron, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Scald the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs.

  2. Cream the suet, then add the sugar and the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. When the milk and crumbs are cool, combine them with the suet mixture.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the raisins, figs, currants, citron, salt, and spices.

  2. Stir in the brandy and fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for five hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard 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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  3. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the scalded milk to form the moist body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Figs
Add body, natural sweetness and a soft, chewy texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor that deepens the spiced, fruity profile.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten stiff and folded in gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser pudding after the long steam.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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