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Dessert

Black Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, currants, sweet milk, molasses, suet or butter, baking powder, flour, and dark flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Black Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine raisins, currants, sweet milk, molasses, and suet or melted butter in a bowl.

  2. Add baking powder and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Mix in dark flavoring to taste.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with your choice of 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy body to the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark colour.
Suet or melted butter
Adds fat, which gives the pudding a rich, moist texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it reacts, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the stiff batter together.

The step that matters

Keep the batter stiff and the mold sealed while steaming. Too much liquid makes a heavy, dense pudding, and water entering the mold during a long steam makes it soggy. Flour should be added until the batter is stiff, then the mold should be covered tightly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, milk, 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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