Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, candied peel, almonds, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. Rub stale bread through a wire sieve to obtain ¾ pound of crumbs.

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, flour, and salt.

  3. Add chopped suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, almonds, and sugar; mix thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the whisked eggs and brandy.

  5. Add a little milk if needed, but do not over‑moisten.

Boil and cool

  1. Prepare a new stout pudding cloth by boiling it in water, then wring it dry and flour it.

  2. Place the pudding mixture in the cloth, tie securely, leaving room for expansion.

  3. Plunge the pudding into boiling water and boil for 8 hours, ensuring water remains boiling.

  4. After boiling, hang the pudding in the cloth to cool.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 set the pudding into a firm, sliceable body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that hold the pudding together.
Muscatel raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and moisture to the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour while contributing a little moisture.

The step that matters

Plunge the pudding into boiling water and keep it boiling. Water that drops below a boil slows heat transfer and can leave the pudding dense or undercooked. Steady boiling for the full 8 hours cooks the eggs and suet through evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, orange, lemon, almond, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes