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Dessert

Puddings and Dumplings

A sweet pudding made with molasses, suet, Indian meal, cinnamon, milk, and eggs, boiled for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Puddings and Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the chopped suet with the Indian meal.

  2. Heat the milk with cinnamon until scalded.

  3. Strain the hot milk while it is still hot.

  4. Gradually stir in the Indian meal and suet.

  5. Add the molasses.

  6. Cover the mixture and let it stand overnight.

  7. Beat the eggs until very light.

  8. Stir the beaten eggs into the pudding mixture.

Boil and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased mold or a well-floured pudding bag, leaving room for it to swell.

  2. If using a mold, cover it.

  3. If using a bag, secure it tightly to prevent water from entering.

  4. Place the pudding in a pot of boiling water.

  5. Boil continuously for five hours, replenishing with boiling water as needed.

  6. Carefully remove the pudding from the mold or bag.

  7. Serve immediately with wine 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. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Cinnamon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,058 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
Set the pudding and add structure and richness as they cook.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor with moisture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and moist as it cooks.
Indian meal
Thickens with heat and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Provides moisture and cooks into the batter to form its base.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling for the full five hours. Steady boiling keeps the pudding cooking evenly and the water level topped up keeps it fully submerged. Leaving room to swell and sealing the bag tightly stops water entering and the pudding becoming soggy.

“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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