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Dessert

Molasses Pudding

A sweet pudding made with flour, suet, sour milk, molasses, fruit, cinnamon, and baking soda, boiled for 2½ hours.

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 ↓

Molasses Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, suet, sour milk, molasses, fruit, cinnamon, and baking soda, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Cook

  1. Boil for 2½ 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. 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk 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 holds the dense pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, moisture and a rich flavour.
Baking soda
Releases gas when combined with the acid in the sour milk and molasses, helping the pudding rise.

The step that matters

Boil for 2½ hours. The long, steady cooking gives heat time to set the dense batter through to the centre. Cutting the time short can leave the middle wet and heavy.

“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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