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Christmas Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

  2. Beat in the yolks of the eggs until smooth and light.

  3. Add the milk, then the flour alternately with the beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir in the brandy and spices, then fold in the dredged fruit. Mix all thoroughly.

Prepare the cloth and boil

  1. Wring out a pudding cloth in hot water and flour it well inside.

  2. Pour in the mixture and boil for five 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 separately beaten whites lighten its structure.
Flour
Forms the body of the pudding, setting into a firm crumb as it cooks.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender texture.
Suet
Its fat solidifies as the pudding cools, giving a rich, moist, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps create a light batter.
Raisins
Dried fruit that adds sweetness, chew and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for five hours. The pudding must be kept at a steady boil for the full time, because the batter cooks slowly through its dense fruit and fat. Too little heat or time leaves it heavy and underset in the centre.

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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