Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓
Austrian Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, suet, and sugar in a bowl.
Warm the milk and stir it into the treacle.
Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.
Cook
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin.
Boil for 3 hours.
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.
-
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and milk 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
- Flour
- Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
- Magic baking powder
- Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and lightens.
- Treacle
- Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, moist texture.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and binds the mixture into a batter.
The step that matters
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin.. Thorough greasing keeps the pudding from sticking to the basin, so it releases cleanly when turned out after steaming.
“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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