Name: Whole Wheat Pudding
Ingredients: 1½ cups whole wheat flour; ½ cup all-purpose flour; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 cup milk; ½ cup molasses; ½ cup shelled and chopped walnuts; ½ cup raisins

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 ↓

Whole Wheat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix the whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking soda, and salt, then sift the dry ingredients together.
Add the milk, molasses, walnuts, and raisins to the mixture and stir until combined.

Steam and serve

Pour the mixture into a steaming dish and steam for 2½ hours.
Serve with cream, foamy or lemon sauce, or a hard sauce flavored with lemon juice or sherry.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + walnuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together246 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole wheat flour: Provides the main structure and a dense, hearty texture.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses to lift the batter and lighten its crumb.
Molasses: Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with mild acidity.
Milk: Hydrates the flour so the batter forms and stays moist during steaming.
Raisins: Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chew.

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Walnutthe original
Flaxseedfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, milk, molasses, raisin. 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.