Skip to main content
Dessert

Delicious Snowdon Pudding

A boiled pudding made with sugar, beef suet, bread crumbs, lemon zest and juice, egg yolks, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Delicious Snowdon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar, chopped beef suet, bread crumbs, grated lemon zest, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

  2. Stir in brandy to taste.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil the pudding for about six 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. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharp lemon flavour.
Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provides the body and structure that holds the pudding together.
Lemons
Adds acidity and bright aroma from the juice and zest.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and a smooth, set texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, beef, bread, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, beef, bread, egg, 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes