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Dessert

Lemon Suet Pudding

A suet pudding with currants, lemon zest, sugar, bread crumbs, and eggs, baked for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lemon Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix half a pound of finely grated bread crumbs with six ounces of fresh beef-kidney suet (free from skin and minced very small), a quarter of a pound of caster sugar, six ounces of currants, the grated rind and strained juice of a large lemon, and four full-size or five small well-beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the pudding for one hour in a brisk oven.

  2. When the pudding is a fine brown colour, turn it from the dish before serving.

  3. Strew sifted sugar over the pudding, if desired.

  4. Add two more ounces of suet if a larger proportion is liked.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

111Calories
1 gProtein
0 gFat
29 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  4. Beef + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,464 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

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

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Bread crumbs
Give the pudding bulk and body, soaking up moisture to hold it together.
Suet
Melts during baking, adding richness and moisture to the pudding.
Eggs (in the method)
Bind the mixture and set as it bakes, giving the pudding structure.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps its surface brown in the oven.
Currants
Add pockets of sweet, fruity flavour and chewy texture throughout.

The step that matters

Bake until a fine brown colour. Brisk oven heat browns the surface through reactions between sugar and proteins, which adds flavour. Turning the pudding out before it has set can make it break apart.

Swap the currant

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

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

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