Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum-pudding

A rich steamed pudding made with dried fruit, suet, spices, eggs, and alcohol, baked for ten hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the fruit and nuts

  1. Soak the raisins and place them in a bowl. Pour over the brandy and let them soak.

  2. Pick over the currants, wash them in cold water, dry them with a towel, and sift with a little flour.

  3. Remove the skin from the beef suet and chop it finely with the flour.

  4. Slice the citron and candied peels thinly. Grate the zest and squeeze the juice from the orange and lemon.

  5. Pour boiling water over the almonds, let them sit until the skins are moist, then rub off the skins and slice the nuts.

  6. Grate the nutmeg and sift it into the sugar with the salt.

Mix and fill the mold

  1. Crumb the stale bread and mix all ingredients together by hand, adding the eggs, brandy, sherry, and just enough cream or milk to moisten.

  2. Butter and flour a pudding mold, fill it to within an inch of the top, and cover with buttered paper.

Steam the pudding

  1. Cover the mold tightly to prevent water from entering and place it in boiling water, ensuring the water reaches two-thirds up the side.

  2. Boil the pudding steadily for 10 hours, replenishing the water as needed.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 structure as the pudding steams and sets.
Stale bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a light, tender crumb.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, rich color.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and its alcohol helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the mold sealed and the water boiling. A tight cover stops water seeping into the pudding and making it soggy, while steady boiling with water kept at two-thirds up the mold cooks it evenly over the long steaming time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, brandy, flour, beef, lemon, orange, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, brandy, flour, beef, lemon, orange, almond. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes