Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Soak the bread crumbs.
In a bowl, mix the soaked bread crumbs, eggs, suet, currants, and flour until well combined.
Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold.
Cook and serve
Boil or steam for 1.5 hours.
Serve with sauce.
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.
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,398 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,734 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Bread crumbs
- Soaked crumbs soften and add body and moisture to the batter.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and set as the pudding cooks, giving it structure.
- Suet
- Melts during cooking, adding fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
- Flour
- Provides the starch that sets with heat to form the pudding's body.
- Currants
- Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Boil or steam for 1.5 hours. Gentle, moist heat cooks the batter evenly, letting the eggs and flour set while the suet melts slowly. Heat that is too fierce or dry leaves the pudding dense or uneven.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, flour):
- Raisinfits better
- Datesfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, flour. 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.
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