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Dessert

States Ship Pudding

A sweet pudding made with molasses, suet, flour, raisins, currants, and spices, boiled or steamed for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

States Ship Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the cloth and flour it.

Make the pudding

  1. Combine molasses, suet, water, flour, raisins, currants, cloves, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Leave a little room to swell.

  3. Boil or steam for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

588Calories
14 gProtein
2 gFat
130 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Des Moines. Plymouth church. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Scald and flour the cloth, and leave room to swell. A scalded, floured cloth keeps the pudding from sticking so it can release cleanly. Leaving space lets the batter expand as it heats and steams, so the pudding does not burst the cloth or come out dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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