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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A boiled fruit and suet pudding with raisins, currants, candied lemon, spices, and treacle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix muscatel raisins, currants, candied lemon and citron, and grated nutmeg thoroughly.

  2. Add eggs and enough milk to moisten without making the pudding heavy.

Make the economical version

  1. For the economical version, mix beef suet, flour, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, brown sugar, mashed carrot, mashed potatoes, chopped candied lemon, fresh lemon rind, and salt.

  2. Add treacle and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a well-floured pudding cloth.

  2. Boil for 5 to 6 hours.

  3. Tie loosely in a floured cloth and boil for 4 hours.

  4. Serve with brandy 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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 give the pudding its set structure as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides starch that helps the pudding hold together and set.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and add a light, tender body to the pudding.
Muscatel raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. A well-floured cloth keeps the pudding from sticking, and tying it loosely in the economical version leaves room for the pudding to expand as it steams.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, lemon, nutmeg, egg, milk, beef, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, lemon, nutmeg, egg, milk, beef, flour. 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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