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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding made with molasses, milk, flour, spices, and served with egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the molasses and milk to the suet and combine the mixtures.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered mold, cover it, and steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with egg sauce.

  3. Optionally, add raisins and currants.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the pudding.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the dry ingredients into a batter.
Baking soda
Reacts to create gas bubbles that help the pudding rise and lighten.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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 →

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