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Dessert

Spiced Molasses Pudding

A pudding made from cornmeal, milk, molasses, ginger, and cinnamon, cooked slowly until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the cornmeal into a pan.

  2. Simmer the milk in a pot until boiling. Stir in the molasses while the milk is boiling.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the warm milk and molasses into the cornmeal gradually.

  2. Add the ground ginger and cinnamon, then beat the mixture well.

  3. Adjust the consistency with more cornmeal or milk if needed.

Boil

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth and tie it securely, leaving space for expansion.

  2. Boil the pudding for about three hours, replenishing the water with boiling water as needed.

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. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the pudding as its starch swells and sets when cooked.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the cornmeal so the batter mixes smoothly and cooks evenly.
West india molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth loosely and keep the water boiling. Cornmeal swells as it cooks, so the cloth needs room to expand or it may burst. Replenishing with boiling water keeps the heat steady so the starch cooks through evenly over the long boil.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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