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Dessert

Honey Comb Pudding

A baked pudding made with egg yolks, sugar, molasses, milk, butter, and egg whites, topped with a butter-sugar-lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Honey Comb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Mix in sugar, salt, and molasses.

  3. Add milk, melted butter, and beaten egg whites.

  4. Stir in baking soda.

  5. Pour into a shallow pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together butter and sugar.

  2. Beat the egg until very light and add to the cream mixture.

  3. Stir in nutmeg, water, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Heat on the stove for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and color to the pudding.
Egg whites
Whipped into the batter to lighten its structure and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to produce gas that makes the pudding rise and form its honeycomb texture.
Molasses
Adds dark color, depth of flavor, and moisture to the pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in both the pudding and the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in baking soda. Baking soda must react with the molasses acid and be folded in gently so the gas is trapped in the batter. Once baked, this creates the honeycomb texture; overmixing or delay can lose the lift.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, molasses, milk, butter, sauce, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, molasses, milk, butter, sauce, nutmeg. 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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