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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, suet, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, milk, brandy, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks until smooth.

  3. Add the milk.

  4. Alternate adding the flour and beaten egg whites.

  5. Stir in the brandy and grated nutmeg.

  6. Dredge the chopped fruit with flour.

  7. Fold the fruit into the mixture.

Prepare the cloth and boil

  1. Wring out the pudding cloth in hot water.

  2. Flour the pudding cloth well.

  3. Pour the mixture into the cloth.

  4. Tie the cloth securely.

  5. Boil for 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites lighten its structure.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense pudding together as it boils.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, creamed base with the butter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, chewy body and moisture to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. If the cloth is loose or poorly floured, water can seep in during the long boil and make the pudding soggy, while a floured cloth helps prevent sticking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, milk, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, milk, brandy. 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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