Skip to main content
Dessert

Railroad Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, suet, flour, milk, fruit, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Railroad Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir warm molasses and baking soda together.

  2. Add chopped suet and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in flour until combined.

  4. Pour in sweet milk and add fruit and salt; mix until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk 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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps the flour hydrate into a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.. Greasing keeps the pudding from sticking when unmolded. The mold should be filled without overfilling, since the batter rises and needs room to expand during steaming.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes