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Dessert

Plain Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, bread crumbs, milk, baking powder, and optional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Plain Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix flour, suet, bread crumbs, salt, milk, baking powder, and sugar if using in a large bowl.

  2. Transfer mixture to a buttered basin and cover with buttered paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for two hours.

  2. Serve with stewed fruit or syrup.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture as it melts during steaming.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and add body, giving the pudding a softer crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and crumbs so the batter forms and cooks through.

The step that matters

Covering the basin. The buttered paper must fit snugly and be sealed so steam cannot escape and water cannot enter. Steady steam keeps the pudding moist and evenly cooked.

“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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