Name: Plum Duff
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 3 eggs; 1 cup milk; 2 teaspoons baking powder; Flour to make a stiff batter

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Duff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

In a bowl, combine sugar, eggs, milk, and baking powder.
Gradually add flour until the mixture forms a stiff batter.
Transfer the batter to a greased pudding mold.

Steam

Steam for 3 to 4 hours.

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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 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).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and lighten.
Flour: Forms the stiff batter's main structure as its starches set with heat.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's tender texture.
Milk: Adds moisture and helps hydrate the flour into a batter.

“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.