Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Mix
Crush the Boston crackers and place them in a large mixing bowl.
Add the sweet milk, chopped suet, molasses, raisins, currants, and spices to the bowl.
Mix all the ingredients thoroughly.
Steam
Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.
Steam the pudding for 3 hours.
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.
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Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,180 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
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Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,577 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Molasses + curranttop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,817 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Boston crackers
- Provides bulk and body, soaking up the milk to form a soft, cohesive pudding.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and softens the crackers so the mixture binds together.
- Suet
- Melts during steaming, adding fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color with a rich flavor.
The step that matters
Steaming the pudding for 3 hours. Steam is what cooks the mixture through and sets it into a firm, moist pudding. Long steaming needs steady, gentle heat, because a pot that boils dry or runs low on water can leave the pudding unevenly cooked.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, raisin):
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Applefits about as well
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, raisin. 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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