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Dessert

Yankee Pudding

A baked molasses pudding served with a sweet milk sauce flavored with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yankee 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 the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, sour milk or buttermilk, and sugar.

  3. Add the butter, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, and flour. Stir until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow pan and bake until set.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 pint of milk or cream, ½ cup sugar, and the lightly beaten egg white in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of cornstarch and flavor with nutmeg.

  3. Boil the sauce for 1 minute, then serve over the pudding.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 sweetness, rich flavor and moisture to the batter.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda and keeps the batter moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the pudding a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 1 minute. Cornstarch granules only swell and thicken the sauce fully once it reaches a boil. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and starchy-tasting.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, flour. 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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