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Dessert

Christmas Plum-puddings

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peel, flour, breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Plum-puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Combine the raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peels, citron, flour, bread crumbs, and nutmeg in a basin. Mix in the eggs and a little milk until well combined.

  2. Grease a pudding mold with butter and pour the mixture into it. Cover the mold with a sheet of paper and tie it in a cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mold in a large pot of boiling water and boil for 4½ hours. Alternatively, tie the mixture in a floured pudding cloth and shape it in a round-bottomed basin, boiling for the same time.

  2. Once done, remove from the cloth or mold, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve with 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 as the pudding sets during boiling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts into the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and soften the texture, keeping the pudding light and moist.
Raisins
Add sweetness, body and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its deep, dark colour.

The step that matters

Keeping the pudding boiling for the full time. The pudding cooks by steam from water at a steady boil. If the water drops below a simmer or the pot runs dry, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy. Topping up with boiling water keeps the heat even over the long cooking time.

Swap the currant

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

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

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