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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A sweet suet pudding with raisins, baked for hours and served with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, sugar, buttermilk, raisins, flour, baking soda, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and salt. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pudding mold or a heatproof dish.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Boil for 4 hours in a pot of water, ensuring the water level remains consistent.

  2. For the sauce, mix 3 tablespoons of flour, 1 cup of sugar, vinegar, and ½ teaspoon of salt with a little cold water. Add 1 pint of boiling water and a small lump of butter to the mixture. Boil the sauce for a few minutes until thickened.

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. Clove + allspicetop 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
Provides fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk acid to lift and lighten the pudding.
Buttermilk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning and a soft texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the water level consistent while boiling. The pudding cooks gently and evenly by steam and water heat over four hours. If the water drops, the pot can boil dry or the pudding can cook unevenly and turn dense.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, buttermilk, raisin, flour, allspice, cinnamon, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, buttermilk, raisin, flour, allspice, cinnamon, sauce. 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

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

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