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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, raisins, flour, egg, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine molasses, warm water, chopped raisins, flour, egg, and baking soda, and mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix 1 tablespoon of flour with 1 cup of sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of boiling water and stir until smooth.

  3. Add butter and flavoring to taste.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 color, moisture and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the steamed pudding together.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding a set, tender structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Chopped raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steam must stay steady and the mold must be sealed so the pudding cooks through evenly and stays moist. Water that boils dry or leaks in can leave it heavy or underdone.

“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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