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Dessert

Suet Plum Pudding

A suet-based pudding made with molasses, sour milk, raisins, flour, spices, and baked for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine chopped suet, molasses, sour milk, and raisins.

  2. In another bowl, mix flour, egg, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until well mixed.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with vanilla or hard 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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.
New orleans molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise and stay tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together.
Egg
Binds the ingredients and adds structure to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas for rising.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold. The mold must be greased so the pudding releases cleanly after steaming. Filling it too full leaves no room for the batter to rise as it cooks.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

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