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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, flour, spices, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 them over carefully.

Mix the batter

  1. Put the wet currants into a bowl with the suet, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, egg, and molasses. Beat well.

  2. Add the flour. Mix thoroughly.

Steam

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

  2. Ensure the water in the steamer is boiling. Keep it boiling, adding hot water as needed.

  3. Steam for 4 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. 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 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.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the pudding together.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's texture as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and deep sweetness with a slight tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.

The step that matters

Keeping the steamer water boiling. Steaming needs a steady supply of hot steam. If the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks slowly and unevenly and can turn out heavy and dense. Adding hot water, rather than cold, keeps the temperature steady.

Swap the currant

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

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

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