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Dessert

Fuller Pudding

A thick, sweet pudding made with water, molasses, butter, currants or raisins, baking soda, salt, and flour, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fuller Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large pot, combine water, molasses, and butter.

  2. Add currants or raisins, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Gradually mix in flour until the batter is stiff.

Cook

  1. Boil the mixture for 2.5 to 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Molasses + curranttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,817 recipes
  5. Currant + flourtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and dark color with a deep, rich flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to release gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides starch and structure that set the stiff batter into a firm pudding.
Currants or raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Gradually mix in flour until the batter is stiff. Flour starch and proteins set into the pudding's structure. Adding it gradually avoids lumps, and stopping when the batter is stiff keeps the pudding from turning dense or tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, flour. 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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