Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, almonds, butter, flour, bread crumbs, citrus peel, spices, sugar, eggs, milk, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 fruit

  1. Stain and wash the raisins and currants.

Make the batter

  1. Chop the beef suet and mix it with the almonds and butter.

  2. Combine the suet mixture with the flour and bread crumbs.

  3. Add the chopped citron, lemon peel, orange peel, mixed spice, and sugar.

  4. Stir in the whisked eggs and gradually add milk to form a stiff batter.

  5. Pour in the brandy and let the mixture stand for 2 hours.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture into a mold and boil.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the batter, giving a softer crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Transfer the mixture into a mold and boil. The mold must be sealed or covered so steam cooks the pudding evenly without water getting in. Too much water or too rapid a boil can make the pudding soggy or cause it to break apart.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, beef, almond, butter, flour, bread, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, beef, almond, butter, flour, bread, milk. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes