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Dessert

Taylor Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, suet, sweet milk, raisins, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Taylor Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine molasses, suet, sweet milk, baking soda, and flour in a bowl until thickened.

  2. Fold in raisins or currants.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Whisk together the egg, flour, sugar, and butter for the sauce.

  2. Thicken the sauce with boiling water until desired consistency.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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
Provides dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the pudding its characteristic flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding's texture.
Egg
Helps bind the sauce and adds richness to its texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter and the sauce, giving them body and structure.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for the full time. Steaming provides gentle, moist heat that cooks the batter through without drying it. Lifting the lid or letting the water drop too low can cause uneven cooking and a dense, heavy texture.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, flour, egg, sugar, butter):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, flour, egg, sugar, butter. 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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