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Dessert

Steamed Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, molasses, milk, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a bowl.

  2. Add the finely chopped beef suet and molasses, then mix in the sweet milk.

  3. Fold in the raisins and currants that have been coated with the remaining flour.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for 2½ hours.

  2. If using small molds, steam for 1½ 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich in texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a deep flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Coating the raisins and currants with flour. Dusting the dried fruit with flour helps it stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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