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Dessert

Harrison Pudding

A steamed pudding made with sour milk, flour, molasses, butter, allspice, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Harrison Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine sour milk, flour, molasses, baking soda, butter, allspice, and raisins in a bowl, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for three 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark sweetness and a deep caramel-like flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the mold without overfilling. Batter rises as the baking soda reacts and the steam expands the crumb. Leaving headroom in the greased mold lets the pudding rise without spilling or becoming dense.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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