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Dessert

Lowell Pudding

A steamed pudding made with milk, suet, raisins, molasses, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lowell Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Combine milk, suet, raisins, baking soda, molasses, salt, and brown sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

  3. Serve with your choice of 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 + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff batter together as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture with a slight acidity.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while deepening the flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours. Steam must stay gentle and steady for the full time so the pudding cooks through evenly. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low can leave the pudding underdone or dry at the edges.

“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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