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Dessert

An Excellent Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding made with butter or suet, molasses, raisins, currants, egg, sweet milk, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

An Excellent Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter or suet with molasses, raisins, currants, and egg.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the ground cloves, grated nutmeg, and salt. Add flour until the mixture is quite stiff.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a 2-quart lard pail and fill it with the pudding mixture, covering it tightly.

  2. Place the pail in a pot of boiling water, ensuring it stays boiling throughout cooking. Steam for three hours, adding more boiling water as needed.

  3. When done, run a knife around the pudding and invert it onto a large plate.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter or suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a deep flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour and dissolves the baking soda into the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding once steamed.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling throughout steaming. Steaming relies on steady heat to cook the pudding through. If the water drops below a boil, the pudding cooks unevenly and turns heavy, so the pot needs topping up with boiling water.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, raisin, egg, milk, clove, nutmeg. 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

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