Skip to main content
Dessert

Invalid Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, flour, moist sugar, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Invalid Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet as finely as possible until you have about 3 tablespoons.

  2. Boil a saucepan half full of warm water.

  3. Grate enough bread to make 3 tablespoons of bread crumbs.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, chopped suet, flour, and moist sugar.

  2. Mix well, then add the eggs and milk, stirring until combined.

Steam

  1. Grease a half-pint pudding basin well.

  2. Pour the mixture into the basin.

  3. Dip a cloth in hot water and flour the cloth.

  4. Cover the basin tightly with the cloth, tying it under the rim, then tie the corners of the cloth loosely over the top of the basin.

  5. Place the basin in the boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the basin.

  6. Steam the pudding for 1.5 hours, adding boiling water as needed.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet
Melts during steaming to make the pudding rich and moist.
Eggs
Set during steaming to bind the mixture and give it structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the pudding a soft, light texture.
Flour
Gives the batter structure as it cooks and sets.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses-like flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the basin sealed and the water topped up while steaming. Steaming needs a steady supply of boiling water around the basin. If the water drops, the pudding cooks unevenly, and a loose cloth lets steam escape and the pudding dry out.

“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 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes