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Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, molasses, and flour, served hot with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine chopped suet, raisins, molasses, flour, milk, and baking powder. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Boil for 3.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat together sugar, butter, egg, and vinegar for 15 minutes.

  2. Heat the sauce until it just begins to scald.

  3. Serve the pudding hot with the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, color, and moisture to the pudding.
Egg
Helps bind and enrich the sauce, giving it body.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until it just begins to scald. Heating the egg-based sauce gently and stopping at the first sign of scalding thickens it without curdling. Overheating can cook the egg into lumps, so watch it closely.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, flour, milk, sugar, sauce, butter, egg):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, flour, milk, sugar, sauce, butter, 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.

More suet pudding recipes

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