Name: Boston Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup flour; 1 cup bread crumbs; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 tablespoons molasses; 1 cup seeded raisins; a pinch of salt

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Boston Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the flour, bread crumbs, baking powder, molasses, raisins, and salt together.
Place the mixture in a bag and boil for 4 hours.

Serve

Serve with hard sauce.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,111 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,383 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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 main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Bread crumbs: Add bulk and absorb moisture, giving the pudding a soft, tender body.
Baking powder: Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, deep flavor.
Seeded raisins: Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

“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.