Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed or boiled pudding made from soaked bread, suet, sugar, dried fruit, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in milk overnight.

  2. Add salt, chopped suet, brown sugar, raisins, currants, egg, nutmeg, and spices to the soaked bread. Mix well until combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for three to four hours.

  2. Serve with cold 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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked in milk, it forms the soft body of the pudding and holds moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it steams and bakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when baked.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Baking in a slow oven. Baking at a low, steady temperature for a long time cooks the pudding through gently. Too much heat can scorch the outside or leave the centre underset and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes