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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A sweet pudding steamed for three hours, made with molasses, sour milk, raisins, nuts, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and butter.

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 ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine molasses, sour milk, raisins, and chopped nuts.

  2. Add baking soda, cinnamon, and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for three hours.

  3. For the sauce, melt butter and mix with powdered sugar, beaten egg, and vanilla.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark, rich flavor to the batter.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise and keeps it moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Beaten egg
Binds the sauce and adds richness and body.

The step that matters

Steam for three hours. Steaming gently and steadily sets the starch and batter without drying it. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or uneven.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon, 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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