Name: Blackberry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint molasses; 1 quart all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 tablespoon salt; 3 pints blackberries

Why it works: Molasses and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Blackberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, mix molasses, flour, baking soda, and salt until well combined.
Gently fold in the blackberries.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Cook and serve

Boil the pudding for 3 hours.
Serve with brandy 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.

Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 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

Molasses: Adds dark sweetness, moisture, and a deep, rich flavor to the pudding.
All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Blackberries: Add fruit moisture, tartness, and color throughout the pudding.

“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.