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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A sweet pudding made with suet, raisins, currants, molasses, flour, and milk, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the suet, raisins, milk, currants, molasses, and flour.

  3. Beat the mixture until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 cooks.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after cooking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses. Baking soda needs an acid to react well, and molasses is acidic enough to activate it. Dissolving it fully first spreads the reaction evenly so the pudding rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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