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 ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Dissolve the flour in the milk.
Add the salt and the beaten egg yolks.
Mix in the beaten egg whites until stiff.
Bake and serve
Bake immediately in a buttered dish set in a pan of water.
Serve hot with any kind of sauce.
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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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 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
- Eggs
- Whipped whites trap air for lift, and the yolks enrich the batter and help it set.
- Flour
- Starch thickens the milk and sets into a firm, pudding-like structure when baked.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that carries the batter and gives it a soft, moist texture.
The step that matters
Baking immediately after adding the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold their air only briefly. If the batter waits, the foam collapses and the pudding bakes up dense instead of light, so it should go into the oven as soon as the whites are folded in.
“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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