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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, suet, sugar, flour, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, milk, brandy, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

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. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat egg yolks until smooth and light.

  3. Mix beaten yolks into butter and sugar.

  4. Add milk gradually, alternating with flour.

  5. Fold in beaten egg whites.

  6. Add brandy and spices.

Add the fruit

  1. Dredge fruit with flour.

  2. Mix fruit into batter thoroughly.

Boil and serve

  1. Prepare pudding cloth by wringing it out in hot water and flouring the inside.

  2. Pour mixture into cloth.

  3. Tie cloth securely.

  4. Boil for 5 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
Whites trap air for lightness while yolks add richness and help bind the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter become light when creamed with butter.
Raisins
Provide chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that gives lightness. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter, while vigorous stirring would deflate it and make the pudding dense.

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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