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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, milk, suet, raisins, currants, flour, baking soda, eggs, salt, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses (or brown sugar), sweet milk, suet (or melted butter), raisins, currants, flour, baking soda, eggs, salt, and spices until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 2½ 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets during steaming.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding's crumb structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, butter, raisin, flour, 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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