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Dessert

Boiled Molasses Pudding

A boiled pudding made with butter, molasses, milk, raisins, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Boiled Molasses Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk.

  2. Sift the cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. Combine the butter, molasses, milk, raisins, and flour mixture in a bowl.

  4. Add spices and salt if using fresh butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for four hours.

  2. Serve with 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to produce gas, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that works with the baking soda to leaven the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich sweetness with a slight acidity.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for four hours. The mold must be sealed and the water kept at a steady boil for the full time; a lower or uneven heat leaves the pudding dense and underdone, while the batter needs room to rise.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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