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Dessert

Ingoldsby Christmas Puddings

A rich, fruit-filled Christmas pudding made with grated bread, flour, raisins, currants, suet, sugar, candied peel, spices, eggs, and brandy.

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

Ingoldsby Christmas Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the grated bread and flour thoroughly.

  2. Add the stoned raisins, currants, minced suet, sugar, candied peel, grated nutmeg, mixed spice, and grated lemon rinds.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and strain them, then mix into the dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the brandy until well combined.

Shape and boil

  1. Divide the mixture into three portions and shape into puddings.

  2. Boil each pudding for 6 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. Flour + raisintop 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 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 add richness and structure as they set during boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread
Soaks up moisture and gives the pudding a light, crumbly body.
Flour
Adds structure that helps the puddings hold their shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the fruit and suet.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and helps preserve the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil each pudding for 6 hours. The pudding must be fully and steadily simmered for the whole time so the eggs and flour set through and the texture becomes firm rather than wet. Keeping the water at a steady boil and topping it up prevents the pudding from drying out or turning soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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