Name: Gloucester Puddings
Ingredients: 3 large eggs; ½ cup unsalted butter, softened; ½ cup all-purpose flour; 12 bitter almonds, blanched and pounded; ¼ pound sifted powdered sugar

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Gloucester Puddings

Ingredients

3 large eggs
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup all-purpose flour
12 bitter almonds, blanched and pounded
¼ pound sifted powdered sugar

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 the batter

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix the eggs, butter, and flour until well combined.
Add the pounded almonds and powdered sugar, and beat until you have a light batter.

Bake and serve

Half fill some cups with the batter.
Bake for 30 minutes, then turn out and serve with wine sauce.

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.

Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Unsalted butter: Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the puddings together as they bake.
Bitter almonds: Contribute a distinctive nutty aroma and flavor to the batter.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the batter and dissolves smoothly for a fine, even texture.

“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.