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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with stale bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, spices, wine, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

English Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in 1 cup of hot milk until cool.

  2. Add the sugar and beaten egg yolks, then mix in nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, ground cloves, and salt.

  3. Chop the beef suet and cream it, then add to the mixture along with floured raisins, currants, figs, and chopped citron.

  4. Stir in the wine and brandy, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 6 to 8 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, as whipped whites, add lightness to the dense pudding.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and brandy.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the whites' trapped air intact, which lightens the heavy batter; stirring them in vigorously knocks the air out and leaves the pudding dense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, wine, brandy, sugar, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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