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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, sour milk, flour, raisins, salt, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine suet, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda (or sweet milk with baking powder).

  2. Add flour, raisins, salt, cinnamon, and cloves; mix until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours over a hot fire.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, moist texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours over a hot fire. Steaming must be steady and the water must not boil dry, since the pudding cooks gently through moist heat. Uneven or weak heat leaves the center dense or underdone.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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

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