Name: Strawberry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint sweet milk; a little salt; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; flour for a thin batter; butter (for sauce); sugar (for sauce); 1 pint fresh strawberries

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 ↓

Strawberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

In a bowl, combine sweet milk, a little salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Add enough flour to create a thin batter.
Steam the mixture for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

For the sauce, cream together butter and sugar.
Mash the fresh strawberries and stir them into the cream mixture.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sweet milk: Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the mixture so it reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.
Flour: Thickens the milk into a batter that sets as the pudding steams.
Fresh strawberries: Add fruit flavor and moisture to the sauce.

“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.