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Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with soaked bread, eggs, suet, raisins, currants, nutmeg, and clove.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the bread in cold water, then squeeze out excess water and crumble the bread into a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, chopped suet, stoned raisins, currants dusted with a little dry flour, grated nutmeg, and clove. Mix well and transfer to a pudding mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve hot with a rich 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 help set the pudding as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Bread
Soaked and crumbled, it provides the body that holds the pudding together.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Squeezing the soaked bread. Bread that stays too wet makes the mixture loose and soggy, so excess water should be squeezed out before crumbling. Too little water left in leads to a dry, crumbly pudding, so the bread should be squeezed, not wrung dry.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, raisin, nutmeg, 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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