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Dessert

Suet Apple Pudding

A pudding made with suet, apples, flour, brown sugar, nutmeg, salt, and eggs, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the suet, grated apples, flour, brown sugar, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and combine well.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours in a pot of water.

  2. Serve with a sweet sauce.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Grated apples
Add moisture and fruity flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in water. The pudding must stay submerged and at a steady simmer for the full time. If the water drops or boils too weakly, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn heavy or soggy in the centre.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, sugar, nutmeg, 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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