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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, molasses, and spices, served with a butter and powdered sugar sauce flavored with lemon, orange, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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, mix molasses, suet, milk, raisins, baking soda, flour, spices, and salt until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream the butter and powdered sugar together.

  2. Beat in the lemon and orange juice, then add the cinnamon. Whip until the mixture is light and creamy.

  3. Shape the sauce attractively and chill before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Provides dark sweetness and moisture, and a rich, deep flavor to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding and help it rise.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the sauce set smooth when chilled.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the sauce and, creamed with butter, gives it a light, smooth body.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The pudding must be steamed gently for the full 3 hours with the mold kept covered and water maintained. Steam keeps the batter moist and cooks it evenly; letting the water run low can leave the pudding dry or dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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