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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, raisins, currants, spices, sour milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the suet, molasses, raisins, currants, baking soda, cloves, nutmeg, salt, sour milk, and egg.

  2. Stir until the mixture is thick like cake batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that melts during steaming, keeping the pudding moist and rich.
Molasses
Provides dark sweetness and moisture, and deepens the color and flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and moisture.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter to a thick cake-batter consistency. Baking soda needs the acid in the sour milk to react and lighten the pudding. A batter that is too thin or unevenly mixed can give a dense, uneven texture after steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, clove, nutmeg, milk, 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.

More suet pudding recipes

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

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