Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crust
Roll out the suet crust to ½ inch thick.
Line the basin, raising it 1½ to 2 inches above the edge.
Fill and seal
Layer the trimmed rump steak in the basin, seasoning with salt and pepper or cayenne.
Pour in enough cold water to create gravy.
Roll out a cover for the pudding.
Moisten the edges of the cover.
Press the cover together with the crust.
Tie a floured cloth over the pudding.
Boil and serve
Place the pudding in boiling water.
Boil for 3 to 5 hours, depending on size.
When done, pierce the middle of the crust with a fork to prevent bursting.
Quickly remove the cloth.
Cut a small opening on top to let steam escape.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Suet
- Melts into the crust during boiling, making it rich, tender and flaky.
- Rump steak
- Provides the meat that cooks slowly in the steam and gravy until tender.
- Cold water
- Creates the gravy that forms in the basin as the meat cooks.
The step that matters
Pierce the crust before serving. Steam builds up inside the sealed pudding while it boils, and piercing the crust with a fork lets pressure release so the crust does not burst.
“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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