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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, suet, sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine flour, suet, sugar, raisins, currants, molasses, eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, and milk in a large bowl, then mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Season with ground cloves and nutmeg to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  4. Steam for 3 hours until cooked through.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda can react and help the pudding rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bittersweet flavor.
Suet
Adds richness and a tender texture as it melts during steaming.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, molasses, egg, cream, milk. 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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