Name: Steamed Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup milk; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 cup molasses; 1 teaspoon nutmeg; ½ cup butter (melted); 1½ cups flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Grease a pan and steam the mixture for 1½ hours.
Beat 1 egg white until stiff.
Gradually add 1 cup sugar while beating.
Pour the mixture into 1 cup boiling water and add nutmeg 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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Clove + molassestop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,483 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps form a soft, even batter.
Nutmeg: Adds warm aroma and flavor.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, nutmeg, butter, flour):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits about as well
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, nutmeg, butter, flour. 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.