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Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, milk, raisins, citron, lemon rind, cinnamon, salt, flour, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the suet, molasses, milk, raisins, citron, lemon rind, and egg.

  3. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a buttered pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with hard sauce, foamy sauce, or wine 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavor, and a dark color.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it a firm, set texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined. Mixing only until the batter comes together keeps gluten development limited, so the pudding stays tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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