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Dessert

Hartford Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread crumbs, suet, coffee, sugar, flour, sour milk, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hartford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine stale bread crumbs, chopped suet, coffee, sugar, flour, sour milk, baking soda, grated nutmeg, cinnamon, and raisins in a large bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with hot 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly and stay moist.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add soft texture to the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming must stay gentle and steady so the pudding cooks through evenly without drying out. Letting the water boil dry or lowering the heat for long stretches can leave the center dense or the outside tough.

“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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