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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, citron, apples, beef suet, stale bread crumbs, eggs, brown sugar, nutmeg, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, brown sugar, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Stir in the bread crumbs and suet one at a time until fully incorporated.

  3. Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together, using about 1 quart.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in boiling water and dredge the inside with flour.

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

  3. Boil the pudding in a large pot of hot water for 3 to 4 hours, replenishing water as needed.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 help it set as the pudding cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture to the pudding.
Flour
Gives the mixture enough body to hold together.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a moist, molasses-like flavor.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The pudding needs room to expand as it cooks, so the cloth must be tied tightly enough to hold the mixture but not packed so full that it bursts or cooks unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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