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Dessert

A Very Nice Christmas Pudding

A rich, spiced Christmas pudding made with soaked crackers, milk, eggs, suet, dried fruit, molasses, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

A Very Nice Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the crackers into pieces and soak them in the milk overnight.

  2. The next morning, rub the soaked crackers through a colander.

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar, molasses, brandy, suet, salt, nutmeg, mace, cloves, lemon rind, citron, currants, and raisins.

  2. Combine the cracker mixture with the egg mixture until well blended.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold or cloth and boil for 5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a rich brandy or wine sauce.

  2. For presentation, pour half a tumbler of brandy over the pudding and ignite it just before serving.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft crackers
Soak up milk and bind the mixture, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and molasses.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, bittersweet flavor.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 5 hours. The pudding must cook long and at a steady simmer so the eggs and crackers set fully and the suet renders evenly. Too little heat or time leaves it wet and dense in the centre.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, molasses, brandy, nutmeg, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, molasses, brandy, nutmeg, 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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