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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the raisins, currants, suet, bread crumbs, flour, sugar, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then add the milk gradually, mixing with the bread crumbs and flour.

  3. Mix the grated rind and juice of the lemons or oranges with the sugar, then combine all ingredients, stirring well.

  4. Dredge the fruit in flour before adding it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture in a tightly covered tin vessel for 6 hours in a kettle of boiling water.

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to give the pudding body.
Flour
Adds structure so the pudding holds together after steaming.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit in flour before adding it to the mixture. Flour coating helps keep the heavy fruit suspended evenly instead of sinking to the bottom of the batter during steaming.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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