Name: Suet Crust for Boiled Puddings
Ingredients: 1 pound all-purpose flour; ½ pound beef suet, finely chopped; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 heaped teaspoon baking powder (optional); Milk or water (as needed); Juice of ½ lemon (optional)

Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Suet Crust for Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

1 pound all-purpose flour
½ pound beef suet, finely chopped
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder (optional)
Milk or water (as needed)
Juice of ½ lemon (optional)

Directions

In a bowl, mix the flour, chopped suet, salt, and baking powder if using.
Gradually add milk or water to form a stiff paste. Use milk for a better crust.
Be careful not to make the paste too wet, or the crust will be heavy.
If desired, add lemon juice when mixing with water.

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 + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + lemontop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,278 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, milk):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Roast Beef211 recipes

Beef Loaf175 recipes

Corned Beef87 recipes

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Suet Crust for Boiled Puddings