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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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. In a basin, combine the raisins, currants, chopped suet, sugar, candied citron, flour, bread crumbs, and nutmeg.

  2. Mix in the eggs and a little milk until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a well-floured cloth.

  2. Place in boiling water and boil for 5 hours.

  3. Remove the pudding from the cloth.

  4. Place it on a dish.

  5. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  6. Serve with your choice of 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and firm texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and help give the pudding a tender, light crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the fruit and suet.
Raisins
Contribute sweetness, chewiness and moisture to the finished pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be well floured so the pudding does not stick and so a dry crust forms on its surface. It should be tied loosely, since the pudding swells as it cooks, and the pot must be kept at a steady boil so the pudding cooks through evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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