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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A sweet, fruit-filled pudding made with suet, flour, sugar, and spices, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the suet, sugar, and egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the milk and flour, and beat until smooth.

  3. Mix in the cinnamon, salt, nutmeg, beaten egg whites, and baking powder.

  4. Fold in the floured fruit gently.

Mould and boil

  1. Pour the mixture into greased molds.

  2. Boil for three hours or longer if needed.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and binding, while beaten whites lighten the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture that loosens the batter and hydrates the flour.

The step that matters

Fold in the floured fruit gently. Overmixing deflates the beaten egg whites and knocks out the gas being released by the baking powder. Gentle folding keeps the air in the batter, so the pudding stays light rather than dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, egg, milk, flour, cinnamon, 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

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

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