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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, molasses, sweet milk, flour, fruit, and baking soda, served with a powdered sugar butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, molasses, sweet milk, flour, fruit, and baking soda. Mix well and pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together powdered sugar and butter.

  2. Place the mixture in a kettle of boiling water and stir in the beaten egg white and vanilla.

  3. Serve the pudding hot with the 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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
Adds fat and richness, giving the pudding a moist, tender crumb as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, sweet flavor to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Egg white
Whipped to stiff peaks and folded in, it lightens the sauce and adds a fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg white into the sauce. Egg white must be beaten to stiff peaks and stirred in gently so the sauce stays light. Overmixing or letting it sit can deflate the foam and leave the sauce dense.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, butter, sugar, 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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