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Suet Pudding, to Serve with Roast Meat

A suet pudding made with flour, suet, milk or water, and optional eggs, boiled for 2½ to 3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding, to Serve with Roast Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Finely chop the suet after removing the skin.

  2. Mix the chopped suet with the flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add milk or water to form a smooth paste.

Cook

  1. Tie the mixture in a floured cloth.

  2. Place it in a buttered basin.

  3. Boil for 2½ to 3 hours.

Variations

  1. Substitute 3 beaten eggs for some of the milk or water.

  2. Increase the suet.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the body of the pudding and gives it structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long boiling.
Eggs
Enrich the batter and add structure and richness when substituted for some of the liquid.

The step that matters

Boil for 2½ to 3 hours. The pudding must boil steadily for the full time so the flour fully cooks through and the suet softens into a tender, moist texture. Letting the water drop too low can leave the centre heavy and undercooked.

“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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