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Dessert

A Boiled Suet Pudding

A boiled suet pudding made with milk, flour, suet, eggs, ginger, and salt, cooked by boiling for about two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

A Boiled Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs and flour with 1 pint of milk until very thick.

  2. Add the shredded suet, ground ginger, and salt to the mixture and stir well to combine all ingredients.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Tie securely and boil in a pot of water for about 2 hours.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + flourtop 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

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

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together in the cloth.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist as it cooks.
Milk
Loosens the flour and eggs into a batter and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Tie securely and boil. If the cloth or mold is not sealed tightly, water can enter and make the pudding soggy and loose. A steady simmer, with the pudding kept under water, cooks the batter evenly through.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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

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