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Dessert

Troy Pudding

A pudding made with suet, molasses, sour milk, flour, raisins, baking soda, and salt, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Troy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine suet, molasses, sour milk, flour, chopped raisins, baking soda, and salt. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with a liquid sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. 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

Suet
Adds rich fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep flavor to the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the pudding rises and softens.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours. The pudding must cook long and steadily at a gentle boil so the batter sets fully through and the leavening works. Letting the water drop too low can leave the center dense and underdone.

“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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