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Dessert

Best Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, currants, bread crumbs, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, candied citron, and candied lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Best Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine raisins, currants, bread crumbs, suet, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, candied citron, and candied lemon. Add salt and spices to taste and mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil slowly for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with a rich 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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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 help it set as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and add body to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture that softens the crumbs and helps the pudding set.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 4 hours. Boiling gently keeps the pudding cooking evenly through without breaking up the cloth or mold. Vigorous boiling can make the pudding tough or let water seep in, so it should simmer steadily with the pot kept topped up.

Swap the currant

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

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

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