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Dessert

Old English Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed plum pudding made with raisins, currants, suet, spices, sugar, milk, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Old English Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, baking powder, suet, brown sugar, and candied lemon.

  2. In another bowl, mix sweet milk and beaten eggs.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, adding flour until a stiff dough forms.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a wet and floured cloth, tie securely, leaving room for rising.

  2. Boil in water for 3 hours without stopping.

  3. Serve with 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 structure as they set during cooking.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the dough rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the stiff dough that gives the pudding its body.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and concentrated fruit flavour.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, deepening the colour and taste.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth. The cloth must be wet and floured and tied with room to rise. A dry cloth can stick and tear, while a tight tie leaves no space for the dough to expand as the baking powder works.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, 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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