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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A traditional British pudding made with flour, bread crumbs, suet, sugar, baking powder, salt, and water or sour milk, boiled or steamed.

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 ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil.

  2. Finely chop the suet.

  3. In a bowl, mix all dry ingredients.

  4. Add enough cold water or sour milk to form a moist paste.

Boil or steam

  1. For boiling, dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, wring it out, and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Transfer the mixture to the cloth, tie it tightly, and boil for 2 to 4 hours.

  3. For steaming, grease a basin or mold, fill it with the mixture, cover with greased kitchen paper, and place in a steamer.

  4. Ensure the water in the steamer reaches halfway up the basin and replenish with boiling water as needed.

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. Sugar + milktop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the bulk of the paste and gives the pudding its structure as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture as it melts into the dough.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs liquid and adds body, helping the pudding hold a soft, moist crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, lightening the pudding so it rises and softens.
Cold water or sour milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients into a moist paste that cooks into a tender pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth or sealing the basin. A loose cloth or uncovered basin lets water seep in or steam escape, leaving the pudding soggy or dry. Keep the wrap snug and the steamer water level maintained.

“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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