Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Fruit Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Butter a basin and line it with pastry, rolling it to ½ inch thick.
Place half the gooseberries at the bottom of the basin.
Sprinkle half the sugar over the gooseberries.
Add the remaining gooseberries and top with the rest of the sugar.
Draw the pastry 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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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Gooseberries
- Provide the tart fruit that forms the filling and flavours the pudding.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart gooseberries and balances their acidity.
- Pastry
- Encloses the filling and holds its shape during boiling.
The step that matters
Seal the edges well. If the pastry seam is not sealed tightly, water can seep into the basin during boiling and dilute the filling, and the juices can leak out, leaving the pudding soggy or hollow.
“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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