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Dessert

Hasty-Pudding

A simple oatmeal pudding cooked with water, milk, sugar, maple syrup, and salt pork or bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Hasty-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Cook the oatmeal

  1. In a pot, bring water to a boil.

  2. Slowly add oatmeal, stirring constantly to prevent lumps.

  3. Cook until thickened, about 10-15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with milk and sugar, or with maple syrup, salt pork, or bacon.

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. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Maple syrup + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together269 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + maple syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + maple syruptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Oatmeal
Forms the thick body of the ppudding as its starch swells and gelatinizes in hot water.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness when served alongside the oatmeal.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and a distinct aroma when served over the pudding.

The step that matters

Slowly add oatmeal, stirring constantly. Dropping oatmeal into hot water all at once clumps the starch, which coats itself and forms lumps. Adding it slowly while stirring spreads the grains so they hydrate evenly and the porridge thickens smoothly.

“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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