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Preserve

Suet Pudding

A sweet pudding made with suet, raisins, molasses, and spices, boiled in a cloth sack.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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. In a bowl, mix sugar, molasses, suet, sweet milk, raisins, baking powder, salt, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Boil the pudding

  1. Place the batter in a cloth sack and boil for three hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine sugar, butter, and beaten egg in a saucepan.

  2. Add water and heat to a boiling point.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

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 + clovetop 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. 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
Melts during boiling, adding richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a darker color to the pudding.
Flour
Builds the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep it moist.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for three hours. The pudding cooks by steam, so the water must stay at a steady boil for the full time. If it cools, the batter sets heavy and dense, and the baking powder cannot lift it properly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Allspicethe original
  4. Gingerfits about as well

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