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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, apple, sugar, spices, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, minced apple, sugar, mixed peel, nutmeg, mace, salt, brandy, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold or basin and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Tie a cloth firmly over the top and boil for 4 hours, ensuring the pudding is covered with boiling water.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooked, turn it out onto a plate and sift icing sugar over the top.

  2. Pour 2 to 3 tablespoons of brandy around the pudding and ignite just before serving.

  3. For a festive touch, place a piece of holly in the center.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 to the pudding as it sets.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and soak up moisture for a tender, cake-like crumb.
Beef kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and dried fruit.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor, and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Keep the pudding fully covered with boiling water. If the water level drops below the pudding, the exposed top cooks unevenly and the texture turns dense or dry. Steady, continuous boiling for the full 4 hours cooks the batter through evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, beef, raisin, apple, 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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