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Dessert

Apple Suet Pudding

A baked pudding made with soaked bread, suet, apples, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, almonds, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Apple 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

  1. Soak the bread in water until soft.

  2. Finely shave the suet and slice the tart apples.

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, combine the soaked bread, suet, apples, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, pounded almonds, and egg yolks, and mix all ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. 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
Egg yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites lighten it for a softer, airier texture.
Bread
Soaked bread adds body and absorbs moisture, giving the pudding a tender, cake-like crumb.
Suet
Suet adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it bakes.
Tart apples
Tart apples add acidity and moisture that balance the sweetness and carry flavour through the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that gives the pudding its lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so the pudding bakes up dense. Fold gently, with a lifting motion, until just combined.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Applethe original

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