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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed dessert made with raisins, currants, suet, breadcrumbs, flour, sugar, spices, eggs, milk, and citrus zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat egg yolks and whites separately.

  3. Gradually add milk to the yolks, then mix in the bread crumbs and flour.

  4. Add grated rind and juice of lemons or oranges to the sugar.

  5. Combine all mixtures, stirring well.

  6. Dredge fruit in flour.

  7. Fold into mixture.

Steam

  1. Pour mixture into a greased tin vessel.

  2. Cover tightly.

  3. Steam for 6 hours in a kettle of boiling water.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind the batter and enrich it, while separately beaten whites are folded in to lighten the pudding.
Suet
Melts during steaming, adding fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg, giving the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Thickens the batter and helps hold the dried fruit in place.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture along with concentrated fruit flavour.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and flour, forming a loose batter that sets as it steams.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if beaten separately and folded gently; stirring them in hard knocks out the air, leaving a denser pudding.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, currant, bread, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, currant, bread, flour, sugar, cinnamon, 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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