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Dessert

Suet Pudding

A sweet pudding made with suet, molasses, sugar, dried fruit, eggs, and spices, baked in a pudding mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Suet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine suet, molasses, sugar, raisins, currants, sliced citron, figs, and eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add flour, baking powder, cinnamon, mace, and cloves, then mix until you have a stiff batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  4. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 rich and moist as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure.
Flour
Forms the bulk of the stiff batter and gives the pudding its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pudding is lighter.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix until you have a stiff batter. The batter needs enough flour to hold the fruit and suet evenly; if it is too loose, the fruit sinks and the pudding can turn heavy or collapse in the mold.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, sugar, raisin, fig, egg, flour, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, raisin, fig, egg, flour, 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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