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Dessert

Suet Pudding with Pears

A suet pudding baked with pears, spices, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Suet Pudding with Pears

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 pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the suet and soaked bread, mixing well with your hands.

  2. Add the eggs, sugar, salt, allspice, cloves, cinnamon, and lemon peel.

  3. Gradually add flour and baking powder until a large ball forms.

Assemble and cook

  1. In a large porcelain-lined kettle, layer half the pears, then place the pudding in the center and arrange the remaining pears around it.

  2. Sprinkle with sugar, sliced lemon, cloves, and cinnamon bark, then drizzle with syrup.

  3. Fill with water and boil for 30 minutes on the stove.

  4. Transfer to a 350°F (175°C) oven and bake for at least 3 hours, adding water as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve hot; it is even better reheated.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during cooking to add richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it binds the suet and keeps the pudding moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure.
Flour
Provides the body that holds the large ball together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.
Cooking pears
Soften during long cooking, adding moisture and fruity sweetness.

The step that matters

Keeping water in the kettle during the long bake. Three hours or more of baking can dry the pudding out. Adding water as needed keeps the steam-rich environment that keeps the suet-bread crumb moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sugar, allspice, clove, cinnamon, flour. 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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