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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together molasses, melted butter, milk, and eggs.

  2. In another bowl, combine flour and baking soda.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, then fold in the raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into 3 greased baking-powder tins.

  2. Place the tins in a kettle of boiling water and steam for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve with 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, moisture and a deep caramel flavour to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the pudding its set structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam at a steady boil. The pudding cooks by steam, so the water must stay boiling for the full time. If it drops too low, the batter may cook unevenly, turn heavy, or fail to set through.

“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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