Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A rich, spiced steamed pudding of suet, bread crumbs, dried fruit, nuts and eggs, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in warm water.

  2. Flour the fruit thoroughly with 1 pint of flour.

Mix the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the beaten eggs, sugar, spices, salt, and a teaspoon of milk.

  2. Stir in the fruit, chopped nuts, bread crumbs, and suet until fully combined.

  3. Add the dissolved baking soda and enough flour to make the mixture stick together.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for four hours.

  2. Serve with lemon or any well-flavored sauce.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  4. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that enriches the pudding and keeps it moist as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set its structure as it cooks.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the mixture enough structure to hold together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and the richness of the fruit.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture in a cloth and boil for four hours. Long, steady boiling cooks the egg and bread crumb mixture through and sets it into a firm, cohesive pudding. Insufficient heat or time leaves it soft and crumbly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, almond, orange, lemon, clove. 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