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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, and spices, served with brandy sauce.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Use the flour to chop with the suet.

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

  3. Stir in the eggs, milk, and brandy.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin or mold.

  2. Cover with a greased saucer or plate the size of the basin.

  3. Tie over with a cloth or paper and steam for about twelve hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with brandy 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid so it holds together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding structure.
Flour
Coats the suet and helps thicken the batter for a firmer texture.
Demerara sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its dark, caramel-like flavour.
Currants
Add sweetness and moist, chewy bits throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for about twelve hours under a tight cover. A tight cover keeps water out and steam in, so the pudding cooks gently and evenly. Long steaming sets the eggs and crumbs into a moist, firm pudding without drying it.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, raisin, brandy, flour, egg, 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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