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Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, flour, bread crumbs, milk, eggs, nutmeg, citron, lemon peel, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, raisins, currants, flour, and bread crumbs.

  2. In another bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, nutmeg, citron, lemon peel, and ginger.

  3. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix until very thick.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for at least 5 hours.

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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the pudding set into a firm, sliceable body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the dry ingredients into a thick batter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for at least 5 hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the dense batter through and sets its structure. Letting the water drop below a simmer can leave the center heavy and undercooked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, flour, bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, lemon. 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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