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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, almonds, candied peel, spices, lemon, brandy, raisin wine, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine flour, bread crumbs, beef suet, raisins, currants, chopped almonds, and candied peel in a pan.

  2. Mix sugar, mixed spice, salt, ginger, lemon gratings, lemon juice, brandy, and raisin wine in a basin.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture in the basin.

  4. Make a hole in the pudding mixture and pour in the egg mixture.

  5. Stir well for 30 minutes.

Mold and boil

  1. Butter your mold.

  2. Pour the pudding mixture into the mold.

  3. Tie the mold in a cloth.

  4. Boil for 6 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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat and moistness, keeping the pudding rich during long cooking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving a soft, tender crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor and helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Stir well for 30 minutes. Thorough stirring distributes the suet, fruit and eggs evenly so every slice has the same texture and flavor. Suet and fruit that settle unevenly leave dense or dry patches after the long boil.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, almond, sugar, ginger. 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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