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Dessert

Suet Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, milk, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the chopped suet, molasses, and milk.

  3. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into buttered molds.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with hard sauce or sterling 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the batter into a moist mixture.

The step that matters

Mix the wet and dry ingredients well. Combining the batter thoroughly distributes the baking soda and hydrates the flour evenly, so the pudding rises uniformly and has a consistent texture rather than dense pockets.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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