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Dessert

Scotch Pudding

A sweet loaf made with sugar, sour cream, flour, eggs, raisins, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Scotch Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and sour cream until well combined.

  3. Add the flour, eggs, raisins, and baking soda. Stir until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the crumb tenderness and browning.

The step that matters

Checking for doneness with a toothpick. The batter is wet and dense, so a toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean before removing the pan. Pulling it too early leaves a gummy, underbaked center, while baking too long dries the crumb.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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