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Dessert

Christmas or Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with breadcrumbs, dried fruit, spices, suet, eggs, milk, and alcohol.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 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 or Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Add the lemon and orange juice, brandy or rum, and ale. Mix again and cover.

  3. Let the mixture stand for six hours.

  4. After six hours, add the eggs and milk; stir well to combine.

Boil and serve

  1. Butter two or three pudding basins or molds and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Cover the basins with buttered and floured cloths and tie them with string.

  3. Boil the puddings for seven to eight hours, depending on their size.

  4. Once done, untie the molds and turn the puddings out onto a hot dish.

  5. Sprinkle with caster sugar, pour some brandy or rum around the base, light it, and serve immediately.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 give the puddings their set structure as they cook.
Flour
Adds bulk and helps hold the pudding together with the breadcrumbs.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the liquids and give the pudding its soft, light body.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavour.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the puddings for the full time. Long, gentle steaming cooks the eggs and starches through and sets the pudding. Stopping early leaves it wet and loose, so keep the water boiling steadily and top it up as needed.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, raisin, lemon, orange, egg, flour, beef. 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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