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Dessert

Black or Honey Comb Pudding

A baked pudding made with molasses, sugar, flour, butter, milk, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Black or Honey Comb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a mixing bowl over a teakettle, melt the butter with the molasses.

  2. Add the sugar and milk, then mix in the flour.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

  4. Finally, stir in the baking soda and any flavoring you like.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for 45 minutes.

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

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

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavour, and reacts with the baking soda.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the acidic batter, helping the pudding rise and open up.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda last and bake right away. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the moist, acidic batter. If the batter stands before baking, much of that gas escapes and the pudding rises less.

“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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