Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Fruit Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grease a basin with butter and line it with a ½ inch thick layer of pastry.
Place half of the gooseberries at the bottom of the basin.
Sprinkle half of the sugar over the gooseberries.
Add the remaining gooseberries and top with the rest of the sugar.
Bring the pastry edges to the center and seal them well.
Boil and serve
Cover the basin with a cloth and tie it securely.
Boil in plenty of water for 1 hour.
Remove from the saucepan, untie the cloth, and turn out onto a dish or serve in the basin with sugar on top.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter and flour 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the pastry lining that encloses the fruit and holds its shape while boiling.
- Gooseberries
- Provide the tart fruit filling and release juices that moisten the pudding as it cooks.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart gooseberries and draws out some of their juice.
The step that matters
Seal the pastry edges well. If the seam is not sealed firmly, boiling water can enter the basin and soak the filling, and the juices can escape, leaving the pudding soggy or loose.
“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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