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Dessert

A Plain Pudding for Children

A simple bread pudding made with molasses, butter, and sliced bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Plain Pudding for Children

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter both sides of the bread slices.

Cook

  1. Heat a skillet and add the molasses or syrup.

  2. Once the molasses has boiled, add the buttered bread.

  3. Brown the bread nicely on both sides.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the dish and soaks up the molasses as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep flavor, and its sugars caramelize to brown the bread.
Butter
Coats the bread to add richness and help it brown evenly in the pan.

The step that matters

Brown the bread nicely on both sides. Molasses sugars darken quickly in a hot pan, so heat that is too high can scorch them before the bread is cooked. Browning builds flavor through caramelization, so keep the heat steady and watch closely.

“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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