Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Cottage Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the milk and mix well.
In another bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.
Fold in the currants.
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake and serve
Bake for 1 hour or until golden brown.
Serve hot with wine sauce.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,475 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
- Butter
- Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with butter.
- Milk
- Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking, making the cake rise and become light.
- Currants
- Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.
The step that matters
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring until smooth keeps the batter evenly mixed and limits gluten development, which helps prevent a tough, dense cake.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, butter. 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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