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Dessert

Lemon Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Suet Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the suet, bread crumbs, and sugar together.

  2. Sift in the salt and baking powder.

  3. Moisten with the beaten yolks of the eggs mixed with the lemon juice.

  4. Grate in the lemon peel and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 4 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs
Provides the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and, with the whites folded in, lighten its texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become light.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour that cuts the richness of the suet.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air when beaten, and gentle folding keeps that air in the batter. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam, leaving the pudding denser after steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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