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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

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

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

Make the pudding

  1. Combine the raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, suet, eggs, citron, lemon peel, nutmeg, ginger, and baking powder in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough sweet milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Tie the mixture in a cloth securely.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding in a pot of water for 3 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 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

Eggs
Bind the dry and fruit ingredients together so the pudding holds its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the mixture so it is lighter rather than dense.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body, giving the pudding a tender, soft crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch and structure that help the pudding set as it steams.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely before boiling. A loose or poorly sealed cloth lets water seep into the pudding, making it soggy and dense. The cloth must be snug enough to hold the mixture's shape while leaving room for it to expand as it cooks.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, beef, egg, lemon, 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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