Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Fruit Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
In a bowl, mix milk, sugar, eggs, cream of tartar, baking soda, and enough flour to form a batter.
Fold in dried fruit and steam the mixture for 2 hours.
Make the sauce
For the sauce, heat 1 pint of milk with the butter until just below boiling.
Take out ½ cup of the pudding batter, thin it, and stir it into the hot milk, stirring constantly until it thickens.
Sweeten and flavor the sauce to taste.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,787 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
- Cream of tartar
- Reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise and gives it a light texture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with cream of tartar to release gas, helping the pudding rise.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the batter together after steaming.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the sauce.
The step that matters
Stirring the thickened sauce. Stirring constantly keeps the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pan and helps the batter blend in evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.
“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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