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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with sugar, butter, milk, and half a cup of molasses.

  2. Mix in the flour and beat well.

  3. Stir in the baking soda mixed with half a cup of molasses until it rises.

  4. Mix it in well just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set and serve hot with butter.

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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 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).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a firm, custardy structure when baked.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to release gas, helping the pudding rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Mix in the baking soda and bake right away. Baking soda releases carbon dioxide gas once it meets the acid in molasses. That gas makes the pudding rise, and it escapes if the batter waits, so the batter should go into the oven soon after the soda is mixed in.

“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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