Name: Whortleberry Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 4 cups flour; 1 tablespoon salt; 2 cups bread crumbs; 6 eggs; 1 quart milk; 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder; 1 quart whortleberries; butter (for greasing the mold)

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Whortleberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour, salt, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, and baking powder to form a stiff batter.
Gently fold in the whortleberries.
Grease a mold with butter and pour the batter into it.

Steam and serve

Steam the pudding for 3 hours.
Serve with your choice of liquid pudding 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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Baking powder: Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the stiff batter.
Bread crumbs: Add body and help the batter hold together while steaming.
Milk: Adds moisture and hydrates the flour and crumbs.
Whortleberries: Provide moisture, tartness and fruity flavor throughout the pudding.

“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.