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Dessert

Crumb Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, molasses, sugar, butter, raisins, currants, nuts, spices, baking powder, soda, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Crumb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the dry bread crumbs, molasses, white sugar, and butter until well combined.

  2. Add raisins, currants, chopped nuts, cinnamon, allspice, mace, cloves, baking powder, and baking soda dissolved in milk. Mix well.

  3. Stir in the sour milk, adjusting the amount if the mixture is too dry.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold and steam for 3 hours.

  2. Serve with your preferred 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

Dry bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and structure that the pudding sets around.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich, moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sour milk
Moistens the crumbs and reacts with the leavening to aid rising.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Adjusting the milk. Dry bread crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so the batter can be too stiff or too wet. Adding sour milk gradually and checking the texture keeps the pudding moist without becoming heavy or dense after steaming.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, molasses, sugar, butter, raisin, currant, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, molasses, sugar, butter, raisin, currant, cinnamon. 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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