Name: Whole Wheat Pudding
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; ¼ cup molasses; ½ cup milk; 1 egg; 1¾ cups whole wheat or graham flour; 4 teaspoons baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 cup raisins

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole Wheat Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Melt the butter, molasses, milk, and well-beaten egg together.
In a separate bowl, mix and sift the dry ingredients.
Combine the dry ingredients with the wet mixture and add the raisins.

Steam and serve

Steam the mixture for 24 hours.
Serve with any pudding 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.

Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Wheat + raisintop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together163 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

Whole wheat or graham flour: Forms the bulk of the structure and gives the pudding its hearty, nutty body.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Egg: Binds the batter and helps set the pudding as it steams.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, deep flavour, and moisture, and its acidity activates the baking soda.

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits about as well
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, molasses, milk, egg, wheat. 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.