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Dessert

Black Pudding

A baked molasses pudding with a lemon‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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

  2. Beat the eggs in a large bowl, then mix in the molasses, butter, sugar, milk, sifted flour, and baking soda.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine 2 cups of sugar, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 1½ cups of boiling water in a saucepan to make the sauce.

  2. Grate the rind of the lemon, squeeze out the juice, and add both to the sauce mixture.

  3. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then serve the sauce over the pudding.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep flavor, and moisture to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the pudding batter.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lift and lighten the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking the pudding. Baking soda needs the acidic molasses to react and raise the batter, so the batter should be mixed promptly and baked as directed. Underbaking leaves the centre wet and sunken, while overbaking dries it out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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