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Dessert

Black Pudding

A sweet, molasses-based pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, sour milk, nutmeg, and baking soda, steamed for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Black Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs.

  3. Mix in the molasses and grated nutmeg.

  4. Gradually add the flour.

  5. Add the sour milk, mixing well.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water, then add it to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the creamed mixture hold air.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the pudding steams.
Sour milk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk and liquid. Adding it promptly and mixing gently keeps the bubbles in the batter so the pudding rises well when steamed.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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