Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Boiled and Steamed Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Fill a pot with boiling water and maintain a hard bubble.
Rinse the muslin cloth in hot and then cold water, wring it dry, butter the inside, and dredge with flour.
Tie the pudding tightly in the cloth, leaving room for it to swell.
When done, plunge the bag into cold water for an instant to shrink the pudding from the cloth.
Let it sit on a dish for a few minutes to harden the outside, then untie and turn out onto a hot dish.
If using a pudding mold, grease it well, ensure the top fits tightly, and do not overfill.
Check that the mold does not float in the water and replenish boiling water if it evaporates.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
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