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Dessert

Boiled Pudding

A boiled pudding made with sour milk, molasses, butter, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine sour milk, molasses, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in salt and flour until well combined.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pot.

  2. Boil for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve with Sauce 3.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda, producing gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and moisture, and its acidity also helps the baking soda react.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas for rising.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the pot promptly. Baking soda starts reacting with the acidic sour milk and molasses as soon as it is mixed in. Delaying the pour lets some of the gas escape before the pudding sets, so it may turn out denser.

“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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