Name: Steamed Berry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 2 cups flour; 1 cup milk; 2 cups berries; 2 teaspoons baking powder

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, baking powder, and berries.
Add the milk and stir until combined.

Steam

Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.
Steam for 2 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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour: Forms the main structure of the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps tenderise the crumb.
Milk: Moistens the dry ingredients so they form a batter.
Berries: Add moisture, flavour and colour 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.