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Dessert

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

A sweet pudding made with molasses, sweet milk, butter, raisins, saleratus, salt, and flour, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Poor Man's Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine molasses, sweet milk, melted butter, chopped raisins, saleratus, and salt.

  2. Add enough flour to achieve a thick batter consistency, similar to pound cake.

Cook the pudding

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Boil for 4 hours or steam until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix boiling water, butter, sugar, and the grated rind and juice of one lemon in a saucepan until combined.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Molasses
Provides dark color, moisture, and a rich, sweet flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness, fat, and a tender crumb to the pudding.
Saleratus
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thick batter together as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to a thick batter consistency. Flour sets the structure of the pudding; too little leaves it loose and wet, while too much makes it dense. Aim for a batter similar to pound cake.

“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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