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Dessert

Orleans Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, molasses, raisins, milk, flour, baking soda, egg, powdered sugar, and wine.

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 ↓

Orleans Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine butter, molasses, raisins, milk, flour, and baking soda in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for two hours in a tin boiler.

Add the egg and sauce

  1. Beat powdered sugar and butter together until creamy to make the sauce.

  2. Beat the yolk of one egg and add it to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg white.

  4. Melt the sauce over the top of a kettle.

  5. Stir in ½ glass of wine.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a soft batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for two hours in a tin boiler. Long boiling needs steady, gentle heat. A fierce boil can scorch the base of the pot and toughen the pudding, while uneven heat cooks it unevenly.

“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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