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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, molasses, butter, water, baking soda, and optional raisins, served with a butter-sugar sauce.

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

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, molasses, melted butter, hot water, and baking soda in a bowl until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. Cream together butter and sugar.

  3. Add hot water to reach desired consistency and flavor with vanilla.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding with the sauce.

  2. Add raisins if desired.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Flour
Builds the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark, rich flavor of the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steady, gentle steam heat sets the batter evenly from the outside in. Uneven or interrupted heat can leave the center underset or the texture dense.

“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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