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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, suet, Indian meal, eggs, sugar, molasses, ginger, raisins, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil the milk and stir in the chopped suet and Indian meal with salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs, flour, brown sugar, molasses, ginger, and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and grate nutmeg over the top.

  2. Bake until half done and browned, then baste with milk.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 rich and moist as it bakes.
Indian meal
Provides the starch and body that thickens the pudding into a firm, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness, and moisture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot milk can scramble or cook unevenly instead of blending smoothly into the batter. Cooling the mixture first keeps the eggs smooth and lets them bind the pudding evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

More suet pudding recipes

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

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