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Dessert

Brown Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, molasses, raisins, spices, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Brown Pudding

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the molasses, raisins, sweet milk, and egg; mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda, flour, and salt.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered pan and steam for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with lemon or vanilla 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its structure.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and the brown color of the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Gradually adding the dry ingredients and stirring only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the pudding tough and dense.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, molasses, raisin, milk, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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