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Dessert

How and When to Make the Christmas Pudding

A steamed suet and fruit mixture made with stale bread, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, spices, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

How and When to Make the Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, currants, citron, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, salt, orange juice, lemon juice, milk, and beaten eggs thoroughly.

  2. Fill two 2-quart molds with the mixture.

  3. Place the molds in a steamer and steam for 5 hours.

  4. Turn the pudding out onto a cloth and let it cool.

Ripen and serve

  1. Hang the pudding in a dry, cold place to ripen for at least two weeks.

  2. On the day of serving, steam the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when steamed.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Raisins
Provide sweetness, chew and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture so the crumbs soften and the batter holds together.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for the full time. Steaming gently and for long enough cooks the eggs and bread into a set, cohesive pudding. Stopping early leaves it wet in the centre, and the long steam is what gives the dense, moist texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace. 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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