Why it works: Flour and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Suet Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
Mash the potatoes or rub them through a sieve and stir them into the flour.
Mix in the shredded suet thoroughly with a knife.
Add enough water to make a stiff paste.
Boil and serve
Dip a pudding cloth into boiling water, place the pudding mixture in the center, and tie it up tightly.
Plunge the pudding into boiling water and boil steadily for two hours.
Carefully turn the pudding out of the cloth onto a hot dish and serve.
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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Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the pudding once mixed with water into a paste.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
- Potatoes
- Add moisture and softness to the dough, helping keep the pudding light.
The step that matters
Plunge the pudding into boiling water and boil steadily. The pudding must stay fully submerged and the water must keep boiling. If the water cools or the cloth is loose, the pudding can absorb water and turn heavy and soggy, and the suet may not melt and set evenly.
“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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