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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, molasses, and spices, served warm with a butter‑flour‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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

Make the pudding

  1. Combine molasses, suet, sweet milk, raisins, flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, and baking soda in a large bowl and mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Boil or steam for about 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in flour and sugar.

  3. Add the egg.

  4. Add enough boiling water to achieve a proper consistency.

  5. Serve the pudding warm with the sauce.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep sweet flavor to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding's texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Egg
Binds the sauce and helps it thicken and hold together.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for about 2 hours. The pudding must cook gently and steadily in a covered mold so it sets through without drying out. Let the water boil down too far or the mold stand unsealed, and the pudding dries and becomes dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

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