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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, molasses, butter, water, and baking soda, served with a butter-sugar vanilla sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, molasses, melted butter, hot water, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. For a fruit pudding, add raisins and currants to the mixture before steaming.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. For the sauce, cream together butter and sugar, then add hot water to reach the desired consistency.

  3. Flavor the sauce with vanilla before serving.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep sweet flavor to the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and mixing until well combined. Baking soda needs to be evenly distributed through the batter so it reacts with the acidic molasses and lifts the pudding evenly; uneven mixing leaves dense pockets or bitter spots.

“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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