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Dessert

Fuller Pudding

A steamed molasses and flour pudding with butter, water, baking soda, cloves, and salt.

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 bowl, mix molasses, butter, water, baking soda, ground cloves, salt, and flour until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam the pudding for 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 + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 dark color, moisture, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it steams.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe 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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