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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with suet, molasses, raisins, and spices, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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. In a large bowl, combine the chopped bread, suet, molasses, egg, raisins, and sweet milk.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the cloves, cinnamon, mace, and salt until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 2 hours in a pot of water.

  3. Serve with Foamy 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to form a soft crumb.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, mellow flavor.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together and helps set the pudding structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and milk to lighten the texture and help it rise.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the milk. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the batter. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter spots or uneven rising.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, molasses, egg, raisin, milk, clove, 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

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

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