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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed suet and fruit pudding made with breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, sultanas, candied peel, spices, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Chop the suet and clean the currants and sultanas.

  2. Stone the raisins and chop or shred the candied peel.

Mix and fill the basins

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl with the spices.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the mixture along with the brandy until well combined.

  3. Grease two pudding basins and fill them to the top with the pudding mixture.

  4. Tie down with a cloth dipped in boiling water and well floured.

Boil and serve

  1. Plunge the basins into boiling water and boil steadily for eight hours.

  2. When ready to serve, boil for another two hours or longer.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Absorbs liquid and gives the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when cooked.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil steadily for the full eight hours. The pudding cooks through slowly in the water; if the boil drops or the water runs low, the centre stays wet and the texture turns uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, egg, brandy):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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