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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled dessert made with beef, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, raisins, currants, almonds, spices, eggs, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve 1 teaspoon baking soda in warm water.

  2. Flour the fruit with 1 pint of flour.

  3. In a large bowl, combine beaten eggs, sugar, spices, and salt.

  4. Stir in milk, then add fruit, chopped nuts, bread crumbs, and suet one at a time.

  5. Add the dissolved soda last and enough flour to make the mixture stick together.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam for four hours.

  2. Serve with wine or brandy.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs, giving the pudding body and a tender crumb.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold the fruit and nuts together.
Baking soda (in the method)
Reacts with the mixture to lighten the pudding slightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved soda last. Adding the soda at the end, with just enough flour to bind, keeps the batter from being overmixed and over-reacted, so the pudding stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, sugar, raisin, almond, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, almond, clove, 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.

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