Name: Pork Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup molasses; 1 cup sour milk; 1 cup fat salt pork, chopped fine; 1 teaspoon baking soda; flour (as needed for thickening); lemon (for flavoring sauce)

Why it works: Milk and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Pork Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine molasses, sour milk, chopped pork, and baking soda.
Stir in enough flour to thicken the mixture.

Steam and serve

Pour the mixture into a steaming dish and steam for 2 hours.
Prepare a liquid sauce and flavor it with lemon.

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.

Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,386 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Molasses + saucetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together280 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Fat salt pork: Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and flavorful as it steams.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour: Thickens the mixture and gives the pudding its body and structure.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, pork, flour, sauce):

Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, pork, flour, sauce. 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.