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Dessert

Hickory Nut Pudding

A sweet pudding made with butter, sugar, hickory nuts, raisins, milk, eggs, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Hickory Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the other ingredients and enough flour to make a soft, rather thin batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in a tube pan for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with lemon sauce or any sauce you prefer.

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 + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the pudding rises and lightens.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps tenderise the batter when creamed with butter.
Sweet milk
Moistens the dry cake and flour, helping form a soft batter.

The step that matters

Steam in a tube pan for 3 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop too low can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, meat, 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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