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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, suet, raisins, flour, eggs, mace, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Warm and stir together the molasses and suet.

  2. In a bowl, combine the raisins, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then add to the warmed molasses and suet mixture.

  4. Season with mace and cinnamon, then mix in the flour mixture and finally the fruit.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold and steam for nearly 3 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavor to the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding rises.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter. Steaming gently cooks the pudding with moist heat, so it stays tender rather than drying out. The mold should be buttered so the pudding releases cleanly, and the long steam time must be kept steady to set the batter through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, raisin, flour, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, raisin, flour, egg, 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

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