Skip to main content
Dessert

English Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, suet, raisins, molasses, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

English Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, chopped suet, chopped raisins, and molasses.

  2. In another bowl, mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until well combined.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture into a floured bag.

  2. Steam the bag for 4 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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during long steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room in the floured bag before steaming. A tightly packed bag leaves no space for the batter to expand as it rises, which can make the pudding dense or split the bag.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes