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Dessert

Boiled Pudding

A boiled pudding made with egg, molasses, sweet milk, bread crumbs, butter, and mixed fruits, steamed for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg, molasses, and sweet milk.

  2. Mix in the bread crumbs and baking soda dissolved in the milk.

  3. Fold in the creamed butter and mixed fruits.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin pan, cover tightly, and steam for two hours.

  2. Serve with hard or foamy 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the pudding as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor.
Creamed butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Mixed fruits
Add chewy sweetness and bursts of fruity flavor throughout.

The step that matters

Cover the tin tightly while steaming. A loose cover lets steam escape and water condense on the surface, so the pudding can turn soggy and dry out unevenly. A tight seal holds steady moisture so the pudding cooks through evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, molasses, milk, bread, raisin, butter):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, molasses, milk, bread, raisin, butter. 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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