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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A baked dessert made with Boston crackers, eggs, milk, raisins, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Break the crackers into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the crackers, eggs, milk, raisins, and nutmeg in a large buttered pudding dish.

  2. Dot with a small piece of butter.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 4 hours, stirring down the mixture three times to prevent the raisins from settling at the bottom.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Boston crackers
Soak up the milk and eggs to form the soft, bread-like body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm custard as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crackers and forms the custard base.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness distributed throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring down the mixture during baking. Raisins are denser than the liquid and sink, so stirring down the mixture three times during the long bake keeps them evenly distributed through the pudding instead of settling at the bottom.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, nutmeg, butter. 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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