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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A quick cornmeal pudding cooked in boiling water, thickened with flour, served with milk, butter, vinegar, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a kettle, bring 1 quart of water to a boil and add salt.

  2. In a large basin, mix the other quart of cold water with enough meal to make a smooth batter.

  3. Pour the cold batter into the boiling water slowly while stirring constantly to avoid lumps.

  4. Boil for 2-3 minutes while stirring, then gradually add dry meal to thicken.

  5. Stir in a good handful of sifted wheat flour and set the kettle on the back of the stove.

Serve

  1. To serve, dip some pudding into a bowl of slightly salted creamy milk or into a soup plate.

  2. If using a plate, create a hollow in the pudding, add butter, mix in vinegar, and fill with molasses.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as it cooks and absorbs water.
Wheat flour
Adds extra thickening so the pudding holds its shape when stirred in at the end.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the pudding.
Molasses
Provides sweetness and a deep, rich flavor when spooned over the pudding.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the sweet molasses and rich butter.

The step that matters

Pour the cold batter slowly into boiling water while stirring constantly. Cornmeal starch thickens quickly on contact with hot water, so adding batter slowly while stirring disperses it evenly and prevents lumps from forming.

“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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