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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, raisins, dates, milk, molasses, and eggs.

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the baking soda, salt, and spices into the flour.

  2. Add the chopped raisins and dates to the flour mixture.

  3. Mix the milk with the molasses and stir it into the dry ingredients.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with foaming sauce or whipped cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + datestop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the pudding batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness with mild acidity.
Eggs
Help bind the batter and give it structure as it sets.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

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