Name: Pudding and Ordinary Diet
Ingredients: 2 oz. of beef suet; 4 oz. of flour; water

Why it works: Beef and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pudding and Ordinary Diet

Ingredients

2 oz. of beef suet
4 oz. of flour
water

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Melt the beef suet in a pan.
Mix the flour with enough water to form a batter.
Combine the melted suet with the batter.

Cook

Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.
Steam or boil for about 1 hour until cooked through.

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.

Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,677 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef suet: Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Flour: Forms the batter's structure, setting into a firm, sliceable body when cooked.

“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.