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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A sweet milk pudding thickened with flour, served with maple molasses and optional berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hasty Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter the bottom and sides of a saucepan or deep frying pan.

  2. Pour in the sweet milk and add a pinch of salt and the butter.

  3. Bring to a boil.

Thicken and serve

  1. Sift in flour by the handful, stirring until the mixture is smooth and thick.

  2. Transfer to a dish that has been dipped in water.

  3. Serve with a very sweet sauce, such as maple molasses.

  4. Optionally, add canned or fresh berries just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth pudding.
Sifted flour
Thickens the boiling milk as its starch swells, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and keeps the pan surface from sticking.

The step that matters

Sifting in the flour. Adding flour in clumps or too quickly lets starch lumps form before they can hydrate. Sifting and adding it by the handful while stirring keeps the pudding smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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