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Christmas Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, suet, dried fruit, candied peel, almonds, sugar, eggs, spices, and 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. Chop the suet, almonds, and candied peel.

  2. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and add them along with the syrup to the dry mixture. Mix everything well until combined.

Steam and cook

  1. Grease a basin and pour the mixture into it. Cover with greased paper and tie it in a cloth. Boil for eight 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. 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

Eggs
Bind the dry ingredients together and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding its body and soft texture.
Flour
Provides structure and helps the pudding hold its shape.
Lyle's golden syrup
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep caramel flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for eight hours. The pudding must boil steadily for the full time, with water kept topped up. Long, gentle cooking sets the batter and cooks the suet and crumbs through, giving a moist, cohesive result.

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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