Name: Suet Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 cup sugar; 1 small suet, chopped; 1 cup sweet milk; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 cup raisins; 1½ teaspoons baking powder

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 pudding

Combine bread crumbs, sugar, chopped suet, sweet milk, eggs, cinnamon, cloves, raisins, and baking powder in a bowl and mix well until all ingredients are combined.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs: Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Bread crumbs: Add bulk and absorb liquid to give the pudding body.
Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Baking powder: Releases gas to lift the batter so the pudding rises lightly.

Swap the clove

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

Nutmegfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk, egg, cinnamon, raisin. 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.