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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, dried fruit, suet, eggs, and spices, flavored with brandy and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Make the mixture

  1. Mix currants, raisins, lemon peel, orange peel, citron, sugar, nutmeg, flour, salt, grated bread, lemon rind, and suet in a large bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, brandy, and sherry to the mixture and combine well.

Boil the pudding

  1. Transfer the mixture into a mold and tie it in a cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for 8 hours, ensuring it is well covered.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 set it firm as the pudding cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Grated bread
Soaks up liquid and gives the pudding a light, tender body.
Flour
Provides structure so the pudding holds together when cooked.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding in water for 8 hours, ensuring it is well covered.. The cloth-wrapped pudding must stay fully submerged for the whole time, because exposed areas dry out and the water must keep a steady boil to cook the mixture evenly through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, orange, sugar, nutmeg, flour, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, orange, sugar, nutmeg, flour, bread. 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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