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Dessert

Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, dried fruit, candied peel, almonds, sugar, eggs, mixed spice, and golden syrup.

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 ↓

Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, bread crumbs, suet, raisins, sultanas, currants, candied peel, almonds, sugar, and mixed spice.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture along with the Lyle's Golden Syrup. Mix thoroughly until all ingredients are well combined.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture into a greased pudding basin and cover with a cloth.

  2. Steam for several hours until cooked through.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Adds bulk and soaks up moisture, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the rich, browned flavour of the pudding.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the pudding stay soft and dark.

The step that matters

Steam for several hours until cooked through. Steaming cooks the pudding gently with moist heat. Too little time leaves the centre doughy and undercooked, so it should be checked until fully set.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, raisin, almond, sugar, egg, syrup. 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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