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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, spices, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 pudding

  1. Combine suet, sugar, eggs, milk, raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, and a piece of butter the size of an egg.

  2. Add 1 egg and beat together.

  3. Stir in 1 cup hot water.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Remove from heat and add grated nutmeg to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Provides fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Forms the batter's structure so the pudding holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the batter and sauce their body.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, raisin, clove, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, raisin, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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