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Dessert

Nut Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, suet, milk, raisins, walnuts, figs, flour, and baking soda, served with a butter‑sugar cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix molasses, chopped suet, sweet milk, seeded raisins, English walnuts, figs, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a steamer and steam for 2½ hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter and powdered sugar until creamy.

  2. Whip the sweet cream and fold it into the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Place the mixture in a double boiler.

  4. Cook until foamy and smooth. Adjust flavor to taste.

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. Walnut + figtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

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

  5. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the pudding its rich colour and flavour.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and volume, making the sauce light and creamy when folded in.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for the full time. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through while keeping it moist. Cutting the time short leaves the centre dense and undercooked.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, fig, flour, butter, sugar. 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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