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Dessert

Steamed Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, flour, butter, and a sweet sauce of butter, sugar, egg white, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix molasses, water, butter, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam the pudding for 3 hours.

  2. Melt ¼ cup butter in a saucepan. Add sugar, egg white, and boiling water to the melted butter. Stir the sauce until smooth.

  3. Add sliced orange to the sauce for flavor.

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. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Molasses
Provides sweetness and a dark, rich flavor to the pudding.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the pudding and the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and adds body to its texture.

The step that matters

Steam the pudding for 3 hours. Steaming must be gentle and steady so the batter cooks through evenly and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the pudding dense or undercooked in the centre.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, butter, flour, sauce, sugar, 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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