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Dessert

Hartford Pudding

A steamed suet and molasses pudding topped with a cinnamon-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hartford Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the suet, coarse sea salt, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, raisins, and flour in the order given.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-greased pan and steam for 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat together the sugar, cinnamon, eggs, and butter for the sauce.

  2. Cook the sauce in a double boiler for 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the steamed pudding together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweet-bitter flavor.
Eggs
Bind the sauce and give it body as it cooks gently.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat lets the eggs thicken the sauce smoothly; direct high heat can scramble them into lumps.

“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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