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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, almonds, bread crumbs, suet, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Wash raisins and currants, then let them dry overnight on top of the stove.

  2. Cut the citron into very small pieces, chop the beef suet finely, blanch and chop the almonds.

  3. Flour all the fruit.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat eggs until very light, then add bread crumbs, milk, spices, fruit, and nuts. Mix thoroughly.

  2. Put mixture in a greased mold or tie it up in floured bags.

Steam

  1. Steam for five hours, ensuring that if using bags, they do not touch the water but hang over the boiling water on a pole, keeping it closely 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten until light, they add structure and lift to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body and softness.
Beef suet
Adds fat, giving richness and a moist, tender texture.
Raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and eggs into a pourable batter.

The step that matters

Keeping the bags out of the water. If floured bags touch the boiling water, the pudding can become soggy and waterlogged. Hanging them above the water lets steam cook the pudding gently while keeping it closed and moist.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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