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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed suet pudding with raisins, currants, molasses, and spices, served with a butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the suet or butter, molasses, raisins, currants, egg, sweet milk, baking soda, cloves, and nutmeg until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff and cold.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a cloth or bag, leaving room for expansion.

Steam

  1. Steam for three hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Cream 1 cup butter and 2 cups sugar together.

  2. Add 3 beaten eggs and 2 tablespoons boiling water.

  3. Serve the pudding with the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich colour to the pudding.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps give it structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff pudding together.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture is stiff and cold.. Flour thickens the batter as it absorbs liquid. Adding it gradually lets you judge the texture, since too much makes the pudding dense and too little leaves it too slack to hold its shape during steaming.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, molasses, raisin, egg, milk, clove, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, raisin, egg, milk, clove, nutmeg. 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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