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Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with molasses, spices, raisins, and a butter‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir black molasses into buttermilk and dissolve baking soda in the mixture.

  2. Add sifted flour and beat well.

  3. Mix in allspice, cloves, mace, cinnamon, raisins, and suet.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour into a pudding mold and place in a steamer over boiling water.

  2. Steam for three hours without lifting the lid.

  3. Dry the mold briefly in the stove, then turn out the pudding.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix sugar and butter with eggs in a bowl.

  2. Place the sauce bowl in a pan of boiling water, stirring occasionally.

  3. Do not let the sauce boil; keep it very hot and flavor with orange extract.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Black molasses
Provides dark color, moisture and a deep, sweet-bitter flavor to the pudding.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the pudding.
Sifted flour
Forms the structure of the batter as its proteins set during steaming.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moistness, since its fat stays soft and lubricates the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the sauce and thicken it gently as they warm, giving it body.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil. Eggs curdle and turn grainy when overheated, so the sauce must stay very hot in gentle water-bath heat and never boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, buttermilk, flour, allspice, clove, cinnamon, coffee):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, buttermilk, flour, allspice, clove, cinnamon, coffee. 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

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