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 ↓
Rhubarb 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).
Prepare the rhubarb and place it in the bottom of a baking dish.
Sprinkle the rhubarb with 1 cup of sugar.
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix sour milk, eggs, salt, baking soda, and butter.
Add flour until the batter is the consistency of cake batter.
Bake and serve
Spread the batter over the rhubarb and bake until done.
Once baked, turn the dish upside down, stir the rhubarb, and serve with sugar and cream.
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.
-
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together670 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Rhubarb
- Provides the tart fruit base that the batter bakes over and sweetens with sugar.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps balance its acidity.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise and gives a tangy flavour.
- Eggs
- Add structure and set the batter as it bakes.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
- Flour
- Gives the batter body and structure so it bakes into a cake-like layer.
The step that matters
Spread the batter over the rhubarb and bake until done. The batter must be thick enough to sit evenly over the fruit and bake through. Thin batter can sink into the rhubarb and leave the top underbaked, while the fruit releases liquid as it heats.
Swap the rhubarb
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Jalapenofits about as well
- Rhubarbthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour. 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.
More rhubarb pudding recipes
You might also like
Rhubarb Pie152 recipes
Rhubarb Marmalade35 recipes
Rhubarb Jelly28 recipes
White Cake431 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.