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Dessert

Black Pudding

A sweet molasses-based pudding with raisins, figs, apples, citron, and suet, baked and steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Black Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix black molasses and sour cream.

  2. Add baking soda and beat well.

  3. Stir in chopped suet, raisins, almonds, figs, apples, and citron.

  4. In another bowl, combine flour, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Steam and dry

  1. Grease four pound-sized baking cans with melted butter.

  2. Pour the batter into the cans and steam for 3 hours.

  3. After steaming, place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10-15 minutes to dry off.

  4. To serve, steam for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + figtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Fig + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together238 recipes

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

  5. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Black molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Sour cream
Adds acidity and moisture, tenderising the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to lift the batter as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture. Mixing the flour in gradually and thoroughly prevents lumps and an uneven batter. Overworking the mixed batter can develop gluten and make the pudding dense.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cream, raisin, almond, fig, flour, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cream, raisin, almond, fig, flour, nutmeg. 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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