Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix the suet, flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt together.
Beat the egg and add it to the mixture, then mix well.
Steam
Turn the mixture into well-greased dairy moulds.
Cover the moulds with buttered paper.
Steam the puddings for 50 to 60 minutes.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,677 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,305 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Beef suet
- Provides fat that melts during steaming, giving the pudding a rich, tender crumb.
- Flour
- Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture and helps it set firm while steaming.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps browning at the edges.
The step that matters
Steaming the puddings. Steam must be kept steadily boiling and the moulds covered so the batter cooks through evenly. Uneven or weak steam leaves the centre dense or underdone.
“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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