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Dessert

Fruit Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, molasses, suet, raisins, currants, baking soda, cloves, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Fruit Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, molasses, and butter or suet.

  2. Stir in raisins, currants, baking soda, and ground cloves.

  3. Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam 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 + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Butter or suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, tender texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together after steaming.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff. Adding flour gradually lets you judge the consistency. Too much flour makes a dry, dense pudding, while too little leaves it loose and unable to hold its shape during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

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