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Dessert

Steamed Suet and Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, raisins, flour, and molasses, topped with a lemon‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Suet and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  2. Stir in the chopped suet, raisins, milk, and molasses until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for about 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine the eggs, butter, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring until the sauce thickens like honey.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pudding batter as it sets during steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lift and lighten the pudding.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the steamed pudding moist and tender.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they gently cook over low heat.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce over low heat. Eggs thicken into a smooth sauce when heated gently; high heat can scramble them into lumps. Stirring constantly keeps the heat even and the texture silky.

“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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