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Dessert

Yankee Pudding

A baked molasses and flour pudding served with a sweet milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yankee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix molasses, sour milk, sugar, butter, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, flour, and egg until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a shallow pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine milk or cream, sugar, egg white, and cornstarch in a saucepan.

  2. Flavor with nutmeg and bring to a boil, stirring constantly for one minute.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep flavor to the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts and lightens the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give it structure as it sets.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and adds tenderness.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce while stirring. Cornstarch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the saucepan. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour, egg. 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.

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