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Dessert

Taylor Pudding

A steamed flour pudding with a butter and sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Taylor Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix molasses, milk, butter, flour, eggs, and baking powder until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the butter and sugar in a separate bowl.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light and add to the butter mixture.

  3. Stir in the boiling water and mix well.

  4. Just before serving, fold in the beaten egg whites and flavor to taste.

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

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

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 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
Adds dark color, rich sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in both pudding and sauce.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in at the end, they lighten the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten and are fragile. Folding them in gently just before serving keeps the sauce light; stirring hard would deflate them.

“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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