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Christmas Pudding, Teetotaler's, Small

A small, alcohol‑free Christmas pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, suet, raisins, nutmeg, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding, Teetotaler's, Small

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk until absorbed.

  2. Add the sugar, suet, raisins, nutmeg, and lemon rind; mix well.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the mixture for at least 5 hours.

  2. Serve with melted butter mixed with a little sugar and lemon juice if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and crumb structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, holding the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the rich suet and raisins.
Muscatel raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for the full time. Long, steady boiling cooks the eggs and crumbs through and sets the mixture into a firm, cohesive pudding. Stopping early leaves it wet and loose in the middle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, beef, raisin, nutmeg, egg. 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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