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Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with molasses, raisins, citron, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the chopped suet, molasses, milk, raisins, citron, lemon rind, and egg.

Make and steam the pudding

  1. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding mold.

  3. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with hard sauce, foamy sauce, or wine 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Stirring the wet into the dry. Stir only until combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the pudding dense and tough.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon, flour, egg, butter. 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 →

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