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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed dessert made with suet, currants, raisins, molasses, flour, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the currants and pick over carefully.

  2. Put the wet currants into a bowl with all other ingredients except flour and baking soda.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the flour and baking soda and mix the mixture thoroughly.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding basin or mold.

  3. Steam for 4 hours, ensuring the water is boiling throughout the cooking process.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps give the pudding structure as it sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together once cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the texture and help it rise.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling throughout steaming. Steady boiling water keeps the steam constant and the pudding cooking evenly. If the water drops, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, molasses, egg, flour, sugar, cinnamon, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, molasses, egg, flour, sugar, cinnamon, allspice. 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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