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Observations on Making Puddings and Pancakes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Observations on Making Puddings and Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the pudding cloth and keep it dry.

  2. Dip the cloth in boiling water, squeeze it dry, and flour it before use.

  3. Tie the cloth loosely for bread and tightly for batter.

  4. Ensure the water is boiling quickly when adding the pudding.

  5. Move the pudding around for a minute to mix the ingredients.

  6. Strain batter pudding through a coarse sieve after mixing.

  7. Always butter the pans and basins before use.

  8. Prepare a pan of cold water to dip the pudding in after boiling to prevent sticking.

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Bread + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Flour + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together781 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

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