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Dessert

Snowdon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, bread crumbs, sugar, raisins, cherries, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snowdon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Decorate the bottom and sides of a well-buttered mold or basin with some halved cherries and raisins.

Make the pudding

  1. In a basin, combine the remaining cherries and raisins with the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, ground rice, lemon rind, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs, then stir in the milk and marmalade until well mixed.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and beat well.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1 to 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with fruit syrup or a suitable sweet 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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Melts during steaming, giving the pudding a rich, moist, tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and light crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add structure as they set during steaming.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist and tender.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, chewiness and fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Ground rice
Adds a slightly firm, granular body that helps the pudding hold its shape.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steaming gently at a steady simmer cooks the eggs and sets the crumb without drying it. If the water boils dry or the steam escapes, the pudding can turn heavy or dry, so the basin should be kept covered and topped up with water.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, sugar, raisin, rice, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, sugar, raisin, rice, egg, milk. 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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