Skip to main content
Main

Suet Puddings and Dumplings

A suet-based batter or dough mixed with flour and salt, boiled for hours to make a pudding or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Puddings and Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the shredded suet and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the salt and enough cold water to form a stiff batter.

  3. If using eggs, beat them and mix in with the suet and flour.

Make the dumplings

  1. For dumplings, combine ¼ pound suet, ½ to ¾ pound flour, and a little salt with one egg and just enough water to form a soft dough.

  2. Shape the dough into pieces the size of a medium apple.

  3. Roll or shake the dumplings in flour to keep them separate.

Boil

  1. Boil the pudding in a basin for 3 hours or in a floured cloth for 2.5 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 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
Provides fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter and dough as it sets.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the batter together.

The step that matters

Keep the dough stiff, not wet. A batter or dough with too much water becomes heavy and sticky, and it will not hold its shape or set well during boiling. Adding water gradually until the mixture just holds together gives a light, cohesive texture.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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.

More suet pudding recipes

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes