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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding, Plain

A steamed pudding made with mashed potatoes, carrots, flour, currants, raisins, suet, sugar, spices, treacle, candied peel, apple, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease or sugar a pudding basin and fill it, leaving the cloth slack for swelling.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, carrots, flour, currants, raisins, suet, sugar, salt, nutmeg, cloves, liquid browning, treacle, candied peel, grated apple, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Transfer the mixture to the prepared basin and cover it with a cloth.

  3. Steam for about 8 hours, ensuring it does not rush the cooking process.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

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.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown and develop flavour.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and body to the pudding's texture.
Currants
Provide fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leaving room in the cloth. The pudding swells as it steams, so the cloth must be slack. A tight cover can restrict expansion and make the pudding dense or split the covering.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, carrot, flour, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, carrot, flour, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, clove. 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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