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Dessert

Snowdon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with suet, breadcrumbs, sugar, eggs, lemon rind and juice, optionally lined with raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Snowdon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix together the chopped suet, breadcrumbs, and sifted sugar.

  2. Add the eggs, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. If the mixture is not moist enough, add the milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in a mould lined with raisins for 4 hours.

  2. Serve with any sauce you like.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb as it melts during steaming.
Breadcrumbs
Provide body and help bind the pudding so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set during steaming.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a tender texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Add milk only if the mixture is still dry. Too much liquid makes the pudding heavy and loose, while too little leaves it crumbly and dense after steaming.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon, milk. 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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