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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, molasses, milk, and egg, flavored with cloves, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, raisins, currants, molasses, milk, and egg.

  2. Add cloves, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt; mix well.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Cover and steam for 3 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to give it body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Egg
Binds the ingredients together so the pudding holds its shape.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a deep, dark flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the texture and help it rise.

The step that matters

Cover and steam for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it out. The mold should be sealed and the water kept at a steady simmer so the pudding stays moist for the full time.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, molasses, milk, egg, clove, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, molasses, milk, egg, clove, cinnamon. 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.

More suet pudding recipes

Lemon 28Boiled 19Steamed 12Potato 11Apple 10Raisin 10 See all 649 →

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