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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding

A steamed pudding made with currants, raisins, dried fruit, suet or butter, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the suet (or butter) and brown sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the molasses, eggs, and bread crumbs to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the currants, raisins, citron, almonds, cherries, pecans, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and baking powder.

  4. Pour the mixture into well-buttered one-pound baking powder cans.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the cans for three hours.

  2. Serve with a brown sugar sauce and wine.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Almond + pecanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 and richness as they set during steaming.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and deep sweetness with a slightly bitter edge.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and lighten the dense fruit mixture, giving it body.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become lighter in texture.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into well-buttered cans. Thorough buttering keeps the dense, sticky pudding from clinging to the can, so it releases cleanly after steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, bread, molasses, almond, whisky, pecans):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, bread, molasses, almond, whisky, pecans. 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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