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Dessert

A Very Nice Christmas Pudding

A rich fruit pudding made with crackers, milk, eggs, sugar, molasses, brandy, suet, spices, citrus, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Very Nice Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Break the crackers into pieces and soak them in the milk overnight.

  2. The next morning, strain the mixture through a colander.

Mix and cook

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, molasses, brandy, suet, salt, nutmeg, mace, cloves, lemon zest, citron, currants, and raisins.

  2. Combine the soaked crackers with the egg mixture and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold or cloth and boil for 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a rich brandy or wine sauce.

  2. Optionally pour brandy over the pudding and ignite it before serving.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft crackers
Soak up milk to form a tender, bready body in the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and molasses.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor and extra moisture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 hours. Long, steady simmering cooks the egg-thickened mixture through and sets its dense texture. Too little time leaves it wet and under-set, while a hard boil can make it cook unevenly or stick to the mold.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, molasses, brandy, nutmeg, 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.

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