Skip to main content
Dessert

The Author's Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, suet, dried fruit, apples, sugar, candied orange rind, spices, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

The Author's Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, apples, sugar, candied orange rind, nutmeg, mace, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add brandy and eggs to the mixture and mix and beat the ingredients well together.

Cook

  1. Tie the mixture tightly in a thickly floured cloth.

  2. Boil the pudding in water for 3.5 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender during long cooking.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure, helping the pudding hold its shape while it steams.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol helps carry the spices through the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the mixture tightly in a thickly floured cloth.. A loose or thinly floured cloth lets water seep into the pudding and can make it soggy, while a tight seal keeps the moisture in and the shape even during the long boil.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, beef, raisin, apple, sugar, orange):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, apple, sugar, orange. 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.

More christmas pudding recipes

Sauce 4Cottage 4Apple 3 See all 175 →

You might also like

Apple Bread PuddingApple Bread Pudding21 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipes