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Dessert

Mystery Pudding

A pudding made with buttered toast, milk, molasses, and eggs, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mystery Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the buttered toast in milk.

  2. Add the molasses and beaten eggs to the soaked toast and mix well, then pour into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake until the top is a rich brown.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Buttered toast
Forms the bread base that soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its body.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid custard that sets around it.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep flavour, and helps the top brown during baking.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the soaked bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until the top is a rich brown. Eggs set as they heat, and the molasses sugars brown on the surface. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it wet in the centre, while overbaking can dry it out.

“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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