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Dessert

Nut Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, molasses, buttermilk, raisins, nuts, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and molasses together.

  2. Add the buttermilk, raisins, nuts, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda.

  3. Gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold and steam for 3 hours.

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

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

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the molasses to add richness and a tender crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the batter.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift as the pudding steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it steams.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in enough flour to form a stiff batter. Adding flour gradually and stopping at a stiff batter controls gluten development and keeps the pudding tender rather than tough and dense. Too much flour at once can leave lumps or overwork the mixture.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, buttermilk, raisin, cinnamon, 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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