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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A boiled Christmas pudding of dried fruit, suet, bread crumbs, eggs and flour, served with a creamed butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and a little milk.

  2. Stir in the raisins, currants, citron, apples, bread crumbs, and suet one at a time.

  3. Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together, using about all the quart.

Boil the pudding

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water and dredge it with flour inside.

  2. Place the pudding mixture in the cloth, tie it tightly, and leave room for expansion.

  3. Boil in a large pot of hot water for 2 to 3 hours, replenishing water as needed.

Serve

  1. Once done, turn the pudding out onto a large flat dish and garnish with a sprig of holly or evergreen.

  2. Serve with a pudding sauce made from creamed butter, brown sugar, egg yolk, and grape juice.

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

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

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds together rather than falling apart.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the texture of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its browned, rich flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth and boiling. The cloth must be tied tightly but with room for the pudding to expand, and the water must stay hot and topped up. Loose ties let water in and make the pudding soggy; too little water lowers the heat and slows cooking.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, beef, bread, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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