Name: Steamed Roll Pudding
Ingredients: 2 pounds flour; ¼ pound butter or lard; 4 teaspoons baking powder; ½ pound sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 3 eggs; milk (enough to make a dough); mixed fruit (for filling)

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Steamed Roll Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

Make a paste with flour, butter, baking powder, sugar, salt, and eggs.
Add milk to form a dough similar to biscuit dough.
Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

Fill and steam

Sprinkle mixed fruit over the dough.
Roll the dough into a long roll.
Steam the roll for 2 hours.
Serve with caramel or cream 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 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 structure of the dough that holds the roll together.
Butter or lard: Adds fat that tenderises the dough and makes it rich.
Baking powder: Releases gas during steaming so the dough rises and becomes light.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly.
Eggs: Bind the paste and add structure and richness to the dough.
Mixed fruit: Provides moisture and sweetness inside the rolled filling.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough into a long roll. If the dough is rolled too loosely or unevenly, fruit can spill out and the roll may steam unevenly. A tight, even roll keeps the filling in place and gives a uniform 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.

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Steamed Roll Pudding