Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Combine bread crumbs, flour, suet, salt, eggs, and milk in a bowl.
Mix until a smooth paste forms.
Add fruit if desired.
Transfer to a pudding cloth or mold.
Cook
Boil for 3.5 hours.
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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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Beef + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,759 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,032 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Stale bread crumbs
- Provide body and bulk that soak up the milk and eggs to form the pudding's base.
- All-purpose flour
- Adds structure, helping the mixture hold together as a firm paste.
- Beef suet
- Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, moist texture as it cooks.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give the pudding its structure.
- Milk
- Moistens the dry ingredients and helps form a smooth paste.
The step that matters
Transfer to a pudding cloth or mold. The mixture must be sealed well so water cannot enter during boiling, which would make the pudding soggy and diluted in flavor and texture.
“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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