Skip to main content
Dessert

Pork Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sweet milk, molasses, salt pork, raisins, flour, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Pork Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with hard 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. Raisin + flourtop 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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body and structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color with a deep, rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, keeping the pudding rich and tender.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter can set when cooked.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full 2 hours. Steam keeps the pudding moist and cooks the dense batter evenly through. Letting the steam drop or cutting the time short can leave the center underset and heavy.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes