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Dessert

Thanksgiving Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, raisins, currants, lemon, cornmeal mush, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Thanksgiving Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mush

  1. Prepare mush with cornmeal and milk, cooking it at the back of the range with a light lid for 2 hours.

  2. Add the lemon zest and juice, beaten eggs, and a pinch of salt to the mush.

  3. Dust the raisins and currants with flour before adding them to the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter pudding molds and dust them with flour before filling with the mixture.

  2. Steam the pudding in the molds for 1.5 hours or longer, depending on size.

  3. Serve with a sauce suitable for English plum pudding.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, giving a tender, custardy texture.
Flour
Dusts the raisins, currants and molds so fruit stays suspended and pudding releases cleanly.
Raisins
Provide chewy sweetness and body throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of tart, concentrated fruit flavor and chew.

The step that matters

Dust the raisins and currants with flour. Flour coats the fruit so it stays spread through the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during steaming. Dry fruit also needs an even coating so it does not clump.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, raisin, flour, milk. 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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