Name: Another Suet Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound fine stale bread crumbs; ¾ pound all-purpose flour; 10 to 12 ounces beef suet, finely chopped; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 2 large eggs; a little milk

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Another Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, flour, chopped beef suet, salt, and pepper.
Add the eggs and enough milk to form a smooth paste.
Transfer the mixture to a pudding cloth or mold.

Cook

Boil for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fine stale bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and give the pudding its body and structure.
All-purpose flour: Provides starch and gluten that bind the mixture and set it as it cooks.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Eggs: Bind the ingredients together and help set the pudding.

“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.