Skip to main content
Dessert

Black Pudding

A steamed sweet pudding made with eggs, molasses, sugar, sweet milk, butter, flour, baking soda, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, molasses, sugar, sweet milk, butter, flour, baking soda, and ground cloves. Mix until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat.
Flour
Provides the main structure once the batter sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.

The step that matters

Filling the mold. Leave room in the greased mold for the batter to rise as it steams. Overfilling can cause the batter to spill or make the pudding dense where the leavening cannot lift it evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

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

More black pudding recipes

Irish 6French 3 See all 71 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesMolasses Sponge CakeMolasses Sponge Cake9 recipes