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Dessert

Cottage Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, dried fruit, spices, eggs, milk, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cottage Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, mashed potatoes, nutmeg, ginger, salt, and cloves thoroughly.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk to the mixture and combine well.

Cook

  1. Tie the pudding mixture in a well-floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in a large pot of water for 4 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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm after boiling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding mixture in a well-floured cloth. A well-floured cloth keeps the cloth from sticking to the pudding as it cooks, so the surface releases cleanly. The cloth also needs to be sealed firmly so water cannot enter and dilute the batter during the long boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, raisin, sugar, potato, nutmeg, ginger, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, potato, nutmeg, ginger, 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.

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