Skip to main content
Dessert

Steamed Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, suet, brown sugar, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Steamed Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the raisins, suet, brown sugar, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is a stiff batter, similar to bread dough.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover and steam for three hours.

  2. Serve hot with your choice of 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 + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 steams.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lighten the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, along with a deeper molasses flavour.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together while it steams.

The step that matters

Keeping the batter stiff. Flour must be added gradually until the batter is stiff, like bread dough. A batter that is too wet can become dense or collapse, while enough flour gives the steamed pudding its firm, sliceable structure.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes