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Dessert

Mock English Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, milk, suet, raisins, flour, spices, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mock English Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine molasses, milk, chopped suet, raisins or currants, and flour in a large bowl.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, allspice, baking soda, and cream of tartar, then mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  4. Steam the pudding for 4 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich sweetness with a slight acidity.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender during long steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the mixture to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to help the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Steam for the full time without lifting the lid. Steam holds the heat steadily, and lifting the lid lets it escape and drop the temperature. Uneven heat can leave the pudding dense or gummy, and the leavening needs consistent heat to rise properly.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice, cream):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, cinnamon, clove, allspice, cream. 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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