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Dessert

Buckeye Pudding

Buckeye pudding is a steamed molasses and raisin pudding served with a powdered sugar and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Buckeye Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses, warm water, and dissolved baking soda.

  2. Add flour, egg yolks, and chopped raisins; stir until combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased mold and steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together powdered sugar and butter.

  2. Add hot water and then fold in the beaten egg whites and chopped walnuts.

  3. Serve the pudding warm with the sauce.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lift and lighten the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the steamed pudding together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lightness to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the creamed sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for 2 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the walnut

The recipe marks walnut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, flour, egg, raisin, sugar, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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