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 ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Pour 1½ pints of milk into a saucepan and add a pinch of salt.
When the milk is just boiling, sprinkle in flour while beating with a fork to prevent lumps.
Continue until the mixture is a stiff batter, using about ½ pound of flour.
Boil for 5-6 minutes, beating continuously.
Finish and serve
Transfer to a dish and mix in 2-3 ounces of fresh butter.
Serve immediately with treacle, sugar, thick cream, or jam.
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).
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 starchy batter that thickens into the pudding's stiff, body-giving structure.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and cooks into a smooth, creamy base for the batter.
- Fresh butter
- Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel when stirred into the cooked batter.
The step that matters
Sprinkling in the flour while beating. Flour added to hot liquid can clump into lumps as its starch hydrates unevenly. Adding it gradually while beating keeps the starch dispersed so the batter cooks smooth.
“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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