Skip to main content
Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 in the egg yolks until smooth.

  3. Add the milk gradually, alternating with the flour.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Add the brandy and spices.

Add the fruit

  1. Dredge the chopped fruit in flour.

  2. Mix the floured fruit into the batter.

Boil the pudding

  1. Prepare a pudding cloth by wringing it out in hot water and flouring it well.

  2. Pour the mixture into the cloth and tie it securely.

  3. Boil for five 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving a light, rich texture and moisture.
Eggs
Whites add lift when folded in; yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
Flour
Provides structure as the batter sets during boiling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and body to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, creamed base.

The step that matters

Securing the cloth. If the cloth is not tied securely, or is not well floured, water can seep into the pudding during the long boil, making it heavy and soggy. A well-floured cloth also helps form a skin that keeps the pudding's shape.

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.

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes