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Dessert

Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, sour milk, butter, spices, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine molasses, sour milk, melted butter, salt, baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and citron, then mix until a stiff batter forms.

  2. Transfer the batter to a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the pudding its deep color and flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the batter rises and softens.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Mix until a stiff batter forms. Mixing only until the batter comes together keeps the crumb tender, while the baking soda reacts with the sour milk and molasses to lift the pudding as it steams.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, butter, clove, cinnamon, raisin. 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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