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Dessert

Fruit Suet Pudding

A suet pudding made with fruit, sugar, spices, and flour, steamed for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fruit Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour boiling water over the chopped suet.

  2. Add dark brown sugar, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisins, and apple.

  3. Mix in baking powder and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  4. Place the mixture in a pan and steam for 3 hours, or use a double boiler.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 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. Cinnamon + raisintop 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 steaming to add richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming to lighten the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Apple
Adds moisture and tartness that balances the sweet spices.
Dark brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep molasses flavour.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through and sets its structure. Letting the water boil dry or cutting the time short leaves the pudding dense and underbaked in the centre.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, raisin, 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.

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