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Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, suet, eggs, citron, lemon peel, nutmeg, ginger, and sweet milk.

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 ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, currants, bread crumbs, flour, beef suet, eggs, citron, lemon peel, nutmeg, ginger, and Cook's Friend in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough sweet milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Tie the mixture in a cloth securely.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding in water for 3 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. 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

Raisins
Add sweetness and moist, chewy pieces throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and moist, chewy pieces throughout the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and help give the pudding a soft, moist body.
Flour
Adds structure, helping the mixture hold together while it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat, giving richness and a tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a cloth securely. If the cloth is loose, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it soggy and diluting its texture. A snug, well-sealed cloth keeps the pudding compact and moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, beef, egg, lemon, nutmeg. 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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