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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A boiled dessert made from breadcrumbs, currants, candied peel, raisins, suet, sugar, flour, eggs, lemon juice, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Add the eggs, lemon juice, and enough milk to create a smooth batter. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

Steam and store

  1. Pour the mixture into 5 buttered molds. Cover the molds with buttered paper and tie the paper with dry pudding cloths.

  2. Boil for 24 hours.

  3. Store in a cool place; it will keep for a year.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 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. Currant + raisintop 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 batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Flour
Provides starch that gives the pudding body and structure.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boil for 24 hours. Long, steady steaming cooks the eggs and starch fully and gives the dense batter its set texture. Let the water keep boiling so the molds stay submerged and heat evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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