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Dessert

Hard Times Pudding

A simple pudding made from syrup, water, baking powder, salt, raisins, and flour, boiled for hours.

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

Hard Times Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine syrup, water, baking powder, and salt. Add raisins to your preference.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour until it resembles pound cake batter.

Cook

  1. Fill a pudding mold halfway to allow for swelling.

  2. Boil the pudding for three hours.

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. Syrup + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Syrup + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Syrup
Provides sweetness and moisture, and forms the body of the pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a batter that holds its shape while boiling.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Fill the mold only halfway. The batter swells as it cooks, and baking powder keeps releasing gas while boiling. A mold filled too full can overflow or burst, so leaving room for expansion matters.

“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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