Name: Corn Meal Suet Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup beef suet, finely chopped; 1 cup sour milk; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup molasses; 2 cups corn meal; 1 teaspoon salt

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a large bowl, combine the beef suet, sour milk, baking soda, molasses, corn meal, and salt.
Pour the mixture into a 2‑quart pan.

Steam and serve

Place the pan in a steamer over boiling water.
Steam for 2 hours.
Serve warm with butter.

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.

Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Beef + corntop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,028 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,243 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Molasses + corntop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together644 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal: Forms the bulk of the pudding's body and gives it a coarse, crumbly structure.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the batter.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.

“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.