Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓
German Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Chop the leftover fruit pudding very finely.
Add flour, suet or butter, sugar, and black currant jam or stewed fruit to the chopped pudding, using ¼ of its weight for each ingredient.
Mix all ingredients with 1 egg.
Bake and serve
Bake the pudding slowly at 300°F (150°C) for nearly 2 hours, ensuring it does not harden on the outside.
Once done, turn it out and sift sugar over the 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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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 + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + black curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together51 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Leftover fruit pudding
- Provides the bulk, moisture and fruity sweetness of the pudding.
- Flour
- Adds structure so the mixture holds together when baked.
- Suet or butter
- Adds fat, giving a rich, tender crumb.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
The step that matters
Slow baking at a low temperature. Baking slowly at a low temperature cooks the pudding through gently, while avoiding a hard, dry crust on the outside. A hot oven would set and toughen the surface before the centre is cooked.
Swap the black currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Black currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg. 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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