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Dessert

Date Pudding

A steamed pudding made with dates, butter, molasses, sweet milk, and spices, served with a butter-sugar-egg milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Date Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine dates, melted butter, molasses, sweet milk, salt, baking soda mixture, spices, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

Steam the pudding

  1. Pour the batter into baking powder cans and steam for 1½ hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg and stir into the boiling milk.

  3. 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. Sauce + sugartop 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

Dates
Provide the sweetness and moist, chewy body of the pudding.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture and a deep, caramel-like sweetness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter structure that holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture and smooth flavor.
Egg
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, creamy body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the boiling milk. If the beaten egg meets very hot milk too quickly, it can curdle. Stirring steadily while adding it helps the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the dates

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

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

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