Name: Steamed Pudding
Ingredients: 1 egg; 1 large teacup sour milk (about 1 cup); a little cream or butter; 1 teaspoon baking soda; blackberries or other pressed fruits; sweetened cream or sauce for serving

Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Pudding

Ingredients

1 egg
1 large teacup sour milk (about 1 cup)
a little cream or butter
1 teaspoon baking soda
blackberries or other pressed fruits
sweetened cream or sauce for serving

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the egg, sour milk, cream or butter, and baking soda until well combined.
Pour the mixture into deep pie plates or a pudding dish.
Fill with blackberries or other pressed fruits.

Steam and serve

Steam for one hour.
Serve with sweetened cream or 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.

Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg: Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during steaming.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the pudding rise.
Blackberries: Add fruit flavour, colour and moisture to the pudding.

“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.