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Dessert

Whole Wheat Pudding

A steamed pudding made with whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, salt, milk, molasses, walnuts, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Whole Wheat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, and salt, then sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the milk, molasses, walnuts, and raisins to the dry mixture and stir until combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a steaming dish and steam for 2 ½ hours.

  2. Serve with cream, foamy or lemon sauce, or a hard sauce flavored with lemon juice or sherry.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wheat + walnuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Whole wheat flour
Provides the body and sturdy structure of the pudding, along with its nutty, earthy flavor.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and a dark color with a rich, deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and dry ingredients to form a moist, spoonable batter.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter note that contrasts the sweetness.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for the full 2 ½ hours. Steam keeps the batter moist while heat slowly sets the starches and leavening gives lift. Cutting the time short leaves a dense, gummy center, while letting the water boil dry can scorch the dish.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, flour, milk, molasses, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Flaxseedfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, milk, molasses, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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