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Dessert

Black Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, sugar, molasses, flour, eggs, and spices, steamed and served with hard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Black Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the sweet milk, molasses, baking soda, ground cloves, flour, and eggs. Mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased mold.

  2. Steam for two hours.

  3. Serve with hard 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the texture and aid rising.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, moisture and a deep flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam must be kept steady and the mold sealed so the pudding cooks through evenly and stays moist. Let the water level drop and the outside can dry out or the center stay underdone.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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