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Dessert

Wedding Cake Pudding

A steamed pudding made with molasses, sweet milk, butter, spices, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Wedding Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine molasses, sweet milk, butter, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add raisins, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold.

  2. Steam for 1½ hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and a rich, moist texture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor to the pudding.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it steams.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, butter, clove, cinnamon, allspice, flour):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, butter, clove, cinnamon, allspice, 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.

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