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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed dessert made with butter, suet, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, milk, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the chopped suet and mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour, raisins, currants, and shredded citron.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the beaten egg whites and yolks, then add to the mixture.

  5. Pour in the milk and brandy, mixing until combined.

  6. Add the cloves, mace, and grated nutmeg, and stir thoroughly.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold and steam for several 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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the body and structure that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, creating a tender crumb with the sugar.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives a rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps cream the butter for a lighter batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam and serve. Steaming gently over several hours sets the batter through without drying it. Keeping the water at a steady simmer and topping it up prevents the pudding from becoming heavy or undercooked in the center.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, raisin, egg, milk, brandy. 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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