Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Fruit Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grease a basin with butter and line it with a paste rolled to ½ inch thick.
Place half of the gooseberries at the bottom of the basin.
Sprinkle half of the sugar over the gooseberries.
Add the remaining gooseberries and top with the rest of the sugar.
Draw the paste to the center and seal the edges well.
Boil and serve
Cover with a cloth, tying it at the bottom, and boil in plenty of water for 1 hour.
Remove from the saucepan, untie the cloth, and turn out onto a dish or serve in the basin with sugar on top.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter and flour 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the paste that encloses the fruit and holds its shape while boiling.
- Gooseberries
- Provide the tart fruit filling that cooks down into a soft, juicy center.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the gooseberries and balances their natural tartness.
- Butter
- Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly after boiling.
The step that matters
Seal the edges of the paste. A poorly sealed paste lets boiling water seep into the basin and dilute the fruit and sugar. A tight seal keeps the juices concentrated inside the pudding while it cooks.
“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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