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Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, sour milk, flour, raisins, citron, currants, spices, and served with a sauce of boiling water, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, molasses, sour milk, flour, baking soda, raisins, citron, currants, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine boiling water, sugar, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until smooth and thickened, then flavor with vanilla or your preferred extract.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet flavor to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during steaming.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to lighten the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding must be steamed for the full time in a sealed mold so it cooks through evenly and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or lifting the lid early can leave it dense or unevenly cooked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, sugar. 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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