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Dessert

Natchez Molasses Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, molasses, water, suet, raisins, currants, citron, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Natchez Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, molasses, hot water, chopped beef suet, raisins, currants, citron, baking soda, and coarse sea salt in a large bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with a sauce made of butter and sugar worked to a cream.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + raisintop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the texture and help it rise.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, molasses, beef, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, molasses, beef, raisin. 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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