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Dessert

Cottage Christmas Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Cottage Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, mashed potatoes, nutmeg, ginger, salt, and cloves thoroughly.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and milk to the mixture and combine well.

  3. Tie the pudding mixture in a well-floured cloth.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding in water for 4 hours.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 add structure as the pudding sets during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Potatoes
Adds moisture and body to the mixture, helping keep the pudding tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the pudding mixture in a well-floured cloth. The floured cloth forms a dry coating that helps the pudding hold its shape while boiling, so water cannot soak in and loosen it.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, raisin, sugar, potato, nutmeg, ginger, 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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