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Dessert

Plain Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, raisins, currants, spices, lemon, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift and mix the flour and baking powder in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped suet, beaten eggs, milk, sugar, raisins, currants, spices, lemon rind, lemon juice, and citron. Mix thoroughly.

Boil and serve

  1. Dip a pudding cloth in hot water and sprinkle it with flour.

  2. Tie up the ends of the cloth and boil the pudding for 5 hours.

  3. For a colonial finish, turn the pudding out onto a platter, pour over a little brandy, and ignite it.

  4. Serve while blazing with a rich 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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as it sets around the other ingredients.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding for 5 hours. The pudding must be wrapped in a cloth tied firmly and kept at a steady boil for the full time, so the batter cooks through and sets. Water that drops too low or a loose cloth can leave the pudding dense or waterlogged.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, sugar, raisin, cinnamon, allspice. 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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