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Dessert

Harrison Pudding

A steamed molasses and fruit pudding made with suet, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Harrison Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a dish.

  2. In a bowl, combine molasses, sweet milk, suet, flour, fruit, baking soda, and cinnamon.

  3. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the pudding as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding tender and rich.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to help the pudding rise.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steam gives gentle, even heat and keeps the surface moist, so the batter sets evenly. If the steam drops, the centre can stay dense and underdone.

“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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