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Cheese Pudding

A steamed cheese pudding made with grated cheese, onions, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. For the pastry, rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the baking powder and salt, then mix in just enough cold water to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to line the basin.

Assemble and steam

  1. Mix the cheese, onions, and seasonings together.

  2. Line a basin with pastry, cover with the same, and steam for 8 hours.

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.

  1. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the filling while it steams.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the pastry tender and short.
Grated cheese
Provides the main flavour and richness of the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking to lighten the pastry.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, onion, pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, onion, pepper, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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