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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, milk, molasses, and a butter‑sugar sauce flavored with wine or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 pudding

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, cloves, and cinnamon together twice.

  2. Chop the suet and mix it with the flour mixture and raisins.

  3. Beat the milk and molasses together, then stir into the dry ingredients.

  4. Steam the mixture in a steamer for 1½ hours, ensuring the water is boiling steadily.

Make the sauce

  1. Cream the butter, then add the sugar, flour, and salt.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling water and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Flavor the sauce with the wine or brandy before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pudding batter and thickens the sauce.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding rises and stays light.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and a deep, slightly bitter flavor, and moisture to the batter.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rounded texture.

The step that matters

Keep the steamer water boiling steadily. Steam is what cooks a suet pudding through. If the water drops to a low simmer or boils off, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and gummy in the centre.

Swap the clove

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

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

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