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Dessert

Suet Puff

A steamed pastry made with egg, sour milk, molasses, flour, suet, raisins, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg, sour milk, molasses, flour, chopped suet, chopped raisins, and baking soda, mixing until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into cups, filling them half full.

  2. Steam the cups for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during steaming.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the pudding once it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep flavour, and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Filling the cups half full. The batter rises during steaming, so filling cups much past halfway can cause overflow and leave the puddings dense or misshapen where they are pressed against the lid or sides.

“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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