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Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, served with a sweet sauce of sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine suet, syrup, boiling water, raisins, baking soda, salt, and spices.

  2. Mix well and pour into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for two hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine sugar, flour, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add boiling water and vanilla, then boil for five minutes.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Melts during steaming to keep the pudding moist and rich.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and become lighter.
Raisins
Add chewy pieces with sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the boiling water to the sauce. Flour must be combined with the butter and sugar and then stirred as the boiling liquid goes in. Stirring prevents lumps, and boiling gelatinizes the starch so the sauce thickens properly.

“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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