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Dessert

Boiled Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, milk, currants, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and suet together.

  2. Add the milk, currants, and baking soda to the mixture.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the brown sugar and butter with 1 tablespoon of flour.

Cook

  1. Stir in the boiling water until it boils.

  2. Combine all mixtures and steam for three 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 fat that keeps the pudding moist and gives it a rich, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten the texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that deepens the flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender texture and flavor.
Currants
Provide pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Combine all mixtures and steam for three hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady with enough water kept in the pot. Steam heat cooks the pudding evenly and keeps it moist, while letting the water boil dry can scorch the pan or leave the pudding dense and underdone.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter. 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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