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 ↓
Quick Puff Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Add enough milk to create a very soft batter.
Assemble and steam
Grease cups well and place a spoonful of batter in each cup.
Add a spoonful of fruit on top of the batter, then cover with another spoonful of batter.
Steam the cups for 20 minutes.
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 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 of the batter, providing structure once cooked.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the puddings rise and turn light.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and makes the batter soft and moist.
- Fruit
- Adds flavour and moisture within each pudding.
The step that matters
Keeping the batter very soft. Flour hydrates as it sits and the batter stiffens. Too much flour or too little milk gives dense, heavy puddings instead of light ones, because the baking powder needs a wet batter to expand.
“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.
More puff pudding recipes
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.