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Suet Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine brown sugar, sweet milk, chopped suet, raisins, currants, and flour.

  2. Add eggs, baking soda, salt, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon, and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  4. Steam for 3 hours until cooked through.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Raisin + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the dense, moist pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steaming holds gentle, steady moisture heat so the pudding cooks through without drying out. Too little water or too high a heat can dry the edges or leave the center underdone, so check the steamer's water level throughout the 3 hours.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, raisin, flour, egg, allspice, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, raisin, flour, egg, allspice, clove. 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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