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Dessert

Porcupine Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, sour milk, butter, raisins, flour, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Porcupine Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, sour milk, and butter until well combined.

  2. Stir in the chopped raisins.

  3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and spices.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam the pudding for 2 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness to the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the dry ingredients in just until combined. Overmixing once the flour meets the liquids develops gluten, making the pudding tough and dense rather than tender.

“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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