Name: Snowdon Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound beef kidney suet, finely minced; ½ pound bread crumbs; 1½ ounces rice flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 6 ounces lemon marmalade (or orange marmalade); 6 ounces pale brown sugar; 6 eggs, whisked; grated rind of 2 lemons; fine raisins, split and stoned

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Snowdon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Butter a mold or basin and press the cut side of the raisins onto the butter to adhere.

Make the pudding

In a bowl, mix the suet, bread crumbs, rice flour, salt, marmalade, sugar, whisked eggs, and lemon rind until well combined.
Pour the mixture gently into the prepared mold.
Cover with buttered paper and a floured cloth.

Boil

Boil for 1½ hours.
If the quantity is smaller, reduce the boiling time by 10 minutes.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,265 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together565 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture and set the pudding as it cooks, giving it structure.
Beef kidney suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Bread crumbs: Provide body and soak up liquid, giving the pudding a light, tender crumb.
Rice flour: Adds starch to help the pudding hold together with a fine texture.
Lemon marmalade: Adds sweetness, acidity and aroma, with peel bits that flavour the pudding.
Pale brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a mild molasses flavour to the pudding.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, rice, flour, sugar, egg, raisin):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Coconutfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, rice, flour, sugar, egg, raisin. 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.