Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Treacle Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Warm the treacle in a saucepan.
Mix the warm treacle with the flour, baking powder, suet, and sugar to form a batter.
Cook
Pour the mixture into a well-greased basin or mold.
Cover the basin with a cloth and secure it.
Boil or steam the pudding for 2 hours.
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 + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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 structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the pudding rises and becomes light.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
- Treacle
- Provides sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the pudding.
The step that matters
Securing the cloth over the basin. A loose cover lets steam escape or water seep in during the long boil or steam, which can make the pudding soggy or dry. A tight seal keeps the moisture and heat even around the batter.
“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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