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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed or boiled dessert made with bread crumbs, flour, suet, dates, currants, raisins, brown sugar, candied peel, carrot, spices, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 fruit and dry ingredients

  1. Stone the raisins and dates, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Chop the candied peel and clean the currants with flour.

  3. Shred and chop the suet, then mix it into the flour along with all the dry ingredients.

  4. Wash, scrape, and grate the carrot into the flour mixture.

Mix and cook

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk, then combine with the dry ingredients.

  2. Place the mixture into a greased basin and steam, or wrap in a pudding cloth and boil for 2.5 to 3 hours.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 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 mixture and help it hold together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Flour
Provides structure, helping the pudding set and hold its shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture of the pudding.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and a soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Steaming or boiling for the full time. The pudding needs a long, gentle cook so the starches set and the suet melts through evenly. Cutting the time short leaves it dense and possibly undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, dates, raisin, sugar, carrot, nutmeg. 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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