Name: Suet Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup suet, chopped; 1 cup raisins, stoned; 1 cup sweet milk; 2 ½ cups flour; ⅓ cup dark molasses; 2 teaspoons baking powder; spices (cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon) to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the chopped suet, stoned raisins, sweet milk, flour, dark molasses, baking powder, and spices, then mix until well combined.
Steam the mixture for three hours.

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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet: Fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Flour: Provides the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder: Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding is light rather than dense.
Dark molasses: Adds sweetness, deep color, and moisture.
Sweet milk: Hydrates the flour and forms the batter's liquid base.
Raisins: Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, milk, flour, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon):

Cardamomfits about as well
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, flour, molasses, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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.