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Dessert

Lemon Suet Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, eggs, milk, lemon juice, sugar, and baking powder.

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

Lemon Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix together the bread crumbs, suet, baking powder, and sugar.

  2. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture along with salt and lemon juice.

  3. Scald the milk and pour it over the mixture, stirring carefully.

  4. Let the mixture stand covered for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 mixture and add structure as the pudding sets in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body that soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its base.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving a moist, tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the pudding rises and stays light.
Milk
Hydrates the bread crumbs and adds moisture for a soft custard-like crumb.

The step that matters

Scalding the milk and stirring carefully. Hot milk softens the bread crumbs and suet so they absorb liquid evenly. Overstirring can break down the crumbs and make the texture dense or gummy, so gentle folding keeps the pudding light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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