Why it works: Milk and apricot work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Apricot Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
Add milk and beaten eggs, and stir until combined.
Assemble and steam
In small cups, layer batter, then fruit, then more batter.
Steam for 20 to 30 minutes until cooked through.
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 + apricottop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together826 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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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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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,630 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 structure of the pudding as the batter sets.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and help it set into a tender structure when cooked.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas that makes the pudding rise and turn light.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and gives the batter a smooth, moist texture.
- Apricots
- Add fruit flavour and moisture to the layers of the pudding.
Swap the apricot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, sugar, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Apricotthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, sugar, egg. 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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