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Christmas Pudding

A rich, fruit‑filled steamed or baked pudding made with suet, dried fruit, spices, eggs, milk, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, flour, and suet in a large bowl.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add the sweet milk.

  3. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the bowl with the suet and flour, and mix well with a wooden spoon.

  4. Stir in the currants, raisins, candied orange and lemon peels, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt.

  5. Add the rum or brandy and mix until combined.

Bake or boil

  1. Butter a baking tin and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. To boil, pour the mixture into a cloth, tie it loosely, and boil for 6 hours.

  4. Serve with a sauce of your choice.

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, tender body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the pudding hold together when cooked.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, bread, flour, egg, milk, orange. 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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