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 ↓
Steak or Kidney Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Split and soak the kidney, then season with coarse sea salt.
Make the pastry
Mix suet, flour, and milk in a bowl to form a paste.
Roll out the paste and line a bowl with it.
Fill and cook
Place the kidney or steak inside the lined bowl, cover with more paste, and pinch the edges to seal.
Cover the bowl with a cloth and boil for a considerable time.
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 + 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 paste and structure that holds the pudding together while it cooks.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the paste rich and tender as it steams.
- Kidney
- Provides the main meaty filling that flavours the pudding as it cooks.
- Milk
- Moistens the flour so it forms a workable, pliable paste.
The step that matters
Sealing the pudding. If the edges are not pinched tightly, water can seep into the bowl during long boiling, diluting the filling and making the pastry soggy.
“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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