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Dessert

Irish Moss

A sweet pudding made from Irish moss, milk, sugar, flavoring, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Irish Moss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the moss

  1. Soak the Irish moss in soda water until it swells.

  2. Squeeze the moss to remove excess water and place it in a large pot with 6 pints of milk.

Make the pudding

  1. Set the pot in a larger pot filled with hot water and stir occasionally.

  2. Let it cook until it slightly jells when dropped on a cold plate.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve, then sweeten and flavor to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Rinse a mold or crock with tepid water, pour in the mixture, and let it cool.

  2. After a few hours, serve with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Irish moss + milktop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Irish moss + sugartop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Irish moss
A seaweed that contains gelling compounds, so it thickens the milk into a soft set as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the body of the pudding and, with the moss, sets into a creamy, tender texture as it cools.

The step that matters

Cooking until it slightly jells. Irish moss sets only when its gelling compounds are properly dissolved and then cooled. Stopping too early leaves the pudding loose, while overcooking can make it stiff and rubbery.

“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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