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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with brown sugar, molasses, sweet milk, butter, raisins, nuts, spices, flour, baking soda, and an egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the brown sugar, molasses, sweet milk, and butter in a large bowl until well combined.

  2. Add the baking soda, raisins, nuts, egg, flour, and spices, then stir until the mixture is smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2½ hours.

  3. If desired, re-steam the pudding just before serving.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding a set, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Molasses
Adds moisture, deep sweetness, and a dark color to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender texture.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 2½ hours. Steam must stay steady and the water must not boil dry, because uneven or interrupted heat can leave the pudding soggy or dense. Steaming cooks the batter gently and evenly through the mold.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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