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Dessert

Ingoldsby Christmas Pudding

A steamed fruit and suet pudding with raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread crumbs, sugar, spices, eggs, and brandy or rum.

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 ↓

Ingoldsby Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, flour, bread-crumbs, and sugar. Add the candied peel, mixed spice, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the beaten eggs and brandy or rum. Mix well until combined.

Steam

  1. Steam for 6.5 hours for the full quantity or 4 hours for half.

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 mixture and add moisture and structure as they set during steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender while it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread-crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a light, tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavour.
Brandy or rum
Adds aroma and moisture to the mixture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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