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Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with suet, raisins, candied peel, spices, flour, sugar, currants, bread crumbs, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet finely.

  2. Remove stones from the raisins.

  3. Wash and dry the currants.

  4. Cut the candied peel into small pieces.

  5. Sift the bread crumbs.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, spices, sugar, raisins, orange and lemon peel, citron, bread crumbs, and currants.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir into the mixture for 25 minutes until thoroughly combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a mold and steam the pudding in it for 13 hours.

  2. Make the pudding the day before and steam for 8 or 9 hours, allowing the rest of the time on the day it is to be served.

  3. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 and richness as they set during steaming.
Flour
Provides structure, helping the dense fruit and crumb mixture hold together after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture, giving the pudding body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for the full time. Steaming gently and for the full long duration cooks the eggs and starches evenly through the dense batter. Stopping early can leave the centre wet and set unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, orange, lemon, cinnamon, allspice, flour, sugar. 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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