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Dessert

Honeycomb Pudding

A baked pudding made with flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Honeycomb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until light, then mix with sugar, salt, and molasses.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour smoothly with the milk, then add the melted butter.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites and finally add the baking soda.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 45 minutes until set.

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

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Yolks provide richness and structure, while whipped whites lift the batter and give a light texture.
Flour
Provides structure, setting the pudding as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to produce gas that makes the pudding rise and open into a honeycomb texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites; stirring hard deflates them, so the pudding loses its light, honeycomb rise.

“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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