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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A sweet rice pudding made with boiled rice, suet or butter, molasses, dried fruit, and eggs, baked and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the boiled rice, chopped suet or butter, sugar, molasses, egg yolks, dried fruit, and spices. Mix well and pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake until the pudding turns dark.

Top and finish

  1. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

  2. Spread the whipped egg whites on top of the pudding and brown lightly in the oven.

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

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rice + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the pudding, giving it body and a soft, tender texture.
Suet or butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds depth, dark colour and sweetness to the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the mixture, helping it set as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to soft peaks, they form a light topping that browns lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Spreading and browning the whipped egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold air in a foam that sets when heated. Spreading them fully over the pudding and browning them lightly keeps the topping light and stops it from weeping or over-browning.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, butter, sugar, molasses, egg, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, sugar, molasses, egg, raisin. 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.

More rice pudding recipes

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