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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, apples, suet, milk, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Flour the fruit with 1 quart of flour.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and milk.

  3. Stir in the fruit, bread crumbs, and suet one at a time until fully incorporated.

  4. Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together, using almost all of the quart.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water.

  2. Dredge the inside of the cloth with flour.

  3. Place the pudding mixture in the cloth.

  4. Tie the cloth tightly, leaving room to swell.

  5. Boil in a large pot of hot water for 2 to 3 hours, replenishing water as needed.

  6. Turn the pudding onto a large flat dish.

  7. Garnish with a sprig of holly or evergreen.

  8. Serve with any pudding 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 they set during boiling.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the mixture body so it holds together.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, contributing moisture and a tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and help give the pudding a soft, cohesive body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavor.
Raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly, leaving room to swell. A loose cloth lets water seep into the pudding and make it soggy, while a tight cloth with no room to expand can burst or distort it as the mixture rises and sets during boiling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, beef, milk, bread, egg, 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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