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Dessert

Troy Pudding

A sweet pudding made with milk, suet, raisins, molasses, flour, and baking soda, boiled for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Troy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine milk, suet, raisins, molasses, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pot and boil for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that give the pudding its body and structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to release gas and lighten the dense batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark, rich flavour.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the mixture into a spoonable batter.

The step that matters

Boil for the full 3 hours. Long, steady cooking in liquid sets the dense batter through to the centre. Stopping early can leave the pudding gummy and under-set.

“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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