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Suet Pudding, Wiggy’s Way

A suet pudding made with suet, flour, eggs, ginger, and milk, boiled for over an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding, Wiggy’s Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the suet as finely as possible.

  2. Roll it with a rolling pin to mix it well with the flour.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk.

  4. Combine all ingredients together.

Cook

  1. Wet a cloth in boiling water, flour it, and tie it loosely.

  2. Place the pudding in boiling water and boil for 1 hour and 15 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Ginger + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 that melts during boiling, giving the pudding moisture and a rich texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set it into a firm, cohesive pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and works with the eggs to form a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth loosely. The pudding needs room to expand as it cooks. A tight cloth restricts rising and can make the pudding dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk. 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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