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Common Suet Crust for Pies or Puddings

A stiff suet crust for pies or puddings made by mixing suet, flour, salt, and water or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Common Suet Crust for Pies or Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the suet, flour, and salt together while dry.

  2. Add enough cold water or lukewarm milk to form a stiff paste.

  3. Work the paste well, rolling it out two or three times.

Shape for pies or puddings

  1. If making pies, beat it with a rolling pin.

  2. If making puddings, omit beating to keep it lighter.

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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust as its gluten develops with working.
Beef suet
Adds fat that makes the crust rich and tender.
Cold water or lukewarm milk
Moistens the flour into a stiff paste that holds the dough together.

The step that matters

Working the paste. Rolling the paste develops gluten, giving pies a firm, sturdy crust, while skipping the beating for puddings keeps them lighter. Overworking or over-beating a suet crust makes it tough, so follow the pie or pudding instruction.

“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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