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Dessert

Honeycomb Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with sugar, butter, flour, milk, molasses, baking soda, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Honeycomb Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix sugar, flour, and molasses in a bowl.

  2. Melt butter in lukewarm milk and add baking soda.

  3. Combine the mixtures and beat thoroughly.

  4. Add the eggs, well beaten, and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas, lightening the pudding and giving it its honeycomb texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and holding it together.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that form the pudding's main structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender crumb and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda to the milk and butter mixture and combine promptly. Baking soda reacts with acid in the molasses to release carbon dioxide. Once the wet and dry mixtures are combined and the batter is in the oven, gas bubbles form and set the crumb, so delay or under-mixing can leave the pudding dense rather than honeycombed.

“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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