Skip to main content
Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with raisins, sugar, molasses, suet, buttermilk, flour, egg, spices, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 batter

  1. Combine raisins, sugar, molasses, chopped suet, buttermilk, flour, egg, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl. Mix until well combined and the batter is very stiff.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a tin bucket or can. Place the bucket or can in a kettle of water and steam for 3 hours or longer.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the very stiff batter together while it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a moist, sticky texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Mix until very stiff. The batter must be very stiff so it holds its shape while steaming. A thin batter can spread, turn heavy, or cook unevenly in the bucket.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, molasses, buttermilk, flour, egg, cinnamon. 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 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes