Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed dessert made with suet, bread crumbs, raisins, currants, nuts, spices, eggs, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine eggs, sugar, spices, salt, and milk.

  2. Stir in the fruit, nuts, bread crumbs, and suet.

  3. Dissolve baking soda in warm water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together, using all the pint.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 4 hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a tender, moist body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold together as a firm pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it lift and lighten.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps moisten and brown the pudding.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together. Too little flour leaves a loose, wet pudding that will not hold its shape, while too much makes it dense and dry. The batter should be firm enough to hold together but still moist.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, sugar, raisin, meat, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, meat, clove, cinnamon. 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 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes