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Dessert

Lemon Suet Pudding

A baked pudding made from bread crumbs, suet, sugar, currants, lemon rind and juice, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lemon Suet Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread-crumbs, minced suet, pounded sugar, currants, lemon rind, lemon juice, and beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a thickly buttered pan.

  3. Bake for 1 hour, drawing it towards the oven door when it turns a fine brown color.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out of the dish before serving and sprinkle with sifted sugar if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread-crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the egg and suet to give a soft, cake-like crumb.
Beef kidney-suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm during baking.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.
Lemon
Lemon rind and juice add aroma and a sharp, acidic brightness.

The step that matters

Drawing the pudding towards the oven door at the first fine brown colour. Sugar browns quickly near the heat source, so the surface can darken or scorch before the centre is set. Moving the pudding to cooler oven zones lets the interior finish cooking evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, beef, sugar, lemon, egg, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, sugar, lemon, egg, butter. 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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