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Dessert

Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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 beaten egg yolks.

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

Add the fruit and finish the batter

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

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

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for five 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the scalded milk to form a soft body that holds the pudding together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture as it steams.
Eggs
Egg whites folded in lighten the batter, while yolks bind it and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the texture moist.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.
Figs
Contribute sweetness, body and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks. Folding gently rather than stirring keeps that air in the batter, so the steamed pudding stays light instead of dense.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, brandy, sugar, nutmeg, egg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, brandy, sugar, nutmeg, egg, cinnamon, clove. 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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