Skip to main content
Main

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sugar, suet, molasses, sour milk, raisins, currants, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs and sugar.

  2. Add the chopped suet, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda; mix well.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, cinnamon, vanilla, allspice, and salt.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 4 hours.

  3. Serve with your choice of 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during steaming.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the thick batter together.
New orleans molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness and a dark color.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is thick. Adding too much flour at once or too little overall changes the batter's thickness, which affects the pudding's final texture. Adding it gradually lets you stop when the batter reaches the right consistency.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon, vanilla. 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.

More suet pudding recipes

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes