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 ↓
Blackberry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Sift the baking powder and flour together to make a stiff batter.
Stir in the blackberries.
Steam and serve
Grease a mold with butter and pour the batter into it.
Steam the pudding for one hour.
Serve with a liquid or hard sauce, as preferred.
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).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 stiff batter that holds the pudding together.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and help it set firmly as it cooks.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a workable consistency.
- Blackberries
- Add fruit flavor, sweetness and moisture to the pudding.
The step that matters
Make a stiff batter. The batter must be stiff enough to hold its shape and suspend the blackberries. If it is too thin, the berries sink and the pudding turns heavy and wet after steaming.
“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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