Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A traditional British dessert made with raisins, currants, suet, flour, sugar, eggs, spices, and brandy, steamed for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Stone the raisins and chop them finely.

  2. Wash, dry, and chop the currants.

  3. Pick over the suet to remove skin and hard bits, then chop it very fine.

  4. Beat the eggs thoroughly and grate the nutmegs.

  5. Chop the candied peel of citron finely and mix the baking powder into the flour.

Mix and boil

  1. Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Place the mixture into a pudding cloth or bag that has been dipped in hot water, wrung out, and floured inside.

  3. Boil water and place the pudding over it, ensuring it boils steadily for five hours.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with sauce.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Raisin + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 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
Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets during boiling.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the soft, moist interior.
Suet
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pudding as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling steadily for the full five hours. Steady boiling cooks the pudding evenly and keeps it moist. If the water drops to a simmer or runs low, the pudding can turn heavy and unevenly cooked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, flour, sugar, egg, allspice, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, bread, flour, sugar, egg, allspice, 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.

More christmas pudding recipes

Sauce 4Cottage 4Apple 3 See all 175 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes