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Dessert

English Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made from grated bread, dried fruit, suet, spices, eggs, and brandy.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over 4 lb of grated bread.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.

  5. Mix in 1½ lb of currants and 1¼ lb of raisins.

  6. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons of flour over the mixture.

Add the rest and mix

  1. Stir in ½ lb of brown sugar, ½ lb of chopped beef suet, 1 grated nutmeg, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of cloves, and the grated peel and juice of 1 large lemon or orange.

  2. Gradually stir in 8 eggs.

  3. Add ½ lb of flour.

  4. Add 1 glass of brandy.

  5. Add ½ lb of citron.

  6. Mix everything very well. Stir hard.

Boil

  1. Boil for 4 to 5 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 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

Grated bread
Soaked in boiled milk, it forms the body and bulk of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during boiling, giving the pudding structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.

The step that matters

Stir hard after adding the eggs and flour. Thorough mixing distributes the eggs, flour and fat evenly so the pudding sets uniformly rather than in dense pockets or streaks.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, raisin, flour, sugar, beef, nutmeg. 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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