English Christmas Pudding

Our cooking experience this week was a true math and science lesson. We made English Christmas Pudding. Anne-Marie at Life's Adventures recently did a post about English Christmas Pudding which included wonderful directions. You are supposed to make it during lent and let it sit for about eight months (until Christmas) to eat it.

Math

1. We learned there are 16 oz in 1 lb. Since the directions are English food is measured by weight instead of volume. (i.e. lbs instead of cups). When my son was weighing out 1 lb of bread to make into crumbs, the scale was set for pounds and ounces. Right away he said "Each time I add a piece to the scale that number (oz) goes up. When will the other one (lbs) change from 0 to 1."

2. We learned 1 lb of raisins = 1 lb of bread, but the volume of space the food takes up is different. For the last year or so, this has been a regular dinner discussion. "What weighs more a pound of bricks or a pound of cotton?" Each time this question is asked my son yells "a pound of bricks", the girls laugh and say "no, they are the same." Well we discussed this after weighing the bread and raisins today and I think he may have gotten it.
3. We learned that there are about 2 tsp per 10 mL. The recipe called for 10 mL of ground almonds and we couldn't find any measuring devices for mL. Then we asked our best friend Mr. Internet and he knew the answer.

 4. We noticed that many products include a weight measurement of the contents on the packaging.

Science
1. We learned that water turns into steam and disappears. Since the pudding had to be steamed for eight hours we were constantly checking to make sure the water didn't run out.

2. We are wondering why Christmas Pudding doesn't rot. We haven't yet learned the answer to this question, but it has inspired our curiosity. Hopefully we will know the answer by Christmas.

Well maybe ours will rot? We made several substitutions as I couldn't find all the required ingredients.

Required Ingredients                                  Our Substitutions
1 lb of bread crumbs
1 lb of currants                                               1 lb dried cranberries, cherries and plums
1 lb of raisins
1 lb of golden raisins
1 oz crystalized ginger                                    1/4 tsp ginger powder
3 oz candied orange and lemon peel               fresh peelings from two clementines and some extra raisins
2 carrots
1 apple
10 ml ground almonds
1 lb vegetable suet                                         1 lb grated frozen butter
2 tbsp golden syrup                                        2 tbsp maple syrup
5 oz dark ale beer
3 tbsp brandy