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Dessert

Buckeye Pudding

Buckeye Pudding is a steamed dessert made with raisins, molasses, flour, eggs, and a powdered sugar butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Buckeye Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raisins, molasses, 1 cup warm water, 2½ cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, and 2 egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Mix well and steam the mixture for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat powdered sugar and ½ cup butter together until smooth to make the sauce.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon warm water and fold in the beaten egg whites last.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the steamed pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to release gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color and flavor to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped form to trap air, adding lightness to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and creamy body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps the air trapped in the whites. That trapped air is what makes the pudding light, so overmixing deflates it and leaves a denser result.

“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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