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Dessert

Yankee Pudding

A sweet, spiced batter baked into a dense cake, served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yankee 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix molasses, sour milk or buttermilk, sugar, and butter until well combined.

  3. Add baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and flour, mixing until smooth.

  4. Stir in the egg and pour the batter into a shallow pan.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the sauce, combine milk or cream, sugar, and lightly beaten egg white in a saucepan.

  3. Add corn starch and nutmeg, then bring to a boil for one minute, 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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provides dark sweetness and moisture, and a deep flavour to the pudding.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with the baking soda so the batter rises.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to produce gas, leavening the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets in the oven.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set its structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil while stirring. Cornstarch thickens only when heated to a boil, and stirring keeps it smooth and prevents lumps or scorching on the pan bottom.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour, egg. 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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