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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made with suet, flour, dried fruit, spices, milk, eggs, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the suet and chop it finely.

  2. Clean the fruit, stone the raisins, and finely shred the mixed peel; peel and chop the lemon rind.

Make the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients well.

  2. Add the milk and stir in the eggs one at a time.

  3. Add the rum or brandy and the strained juice of the lemons. Mix thoroughly for several minutes until well blended.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered pudding basin or a buttered/floured pudding cloth.

  2. Boil for about 4 hours or steam 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 help give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding its soft, crumbly texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the fruit and crumbs together while cooking.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the pudding.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, sweet fruit.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for the full time. Long, gentle cooking in water or steam sets the eggs and cooks the flour and crumbs through. Cutting the time short can leave the centre wet and dense.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, milk, rum):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, milk, rum. 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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