Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Canary Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Grease a mold with clarified butter and dust it with a mixture of equal parts flour and caster sugar.
Make the batter
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the flavoring and beat in the eggs one at a time.
Sift the flour and gently fold it into the mixture.
Steam and serve
Pour the batter into the prepared mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Serve with jam sauce.
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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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,050 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
- Eggs
- Provide structure and richness, setting the sponge as they cook.
- Butter
- Adds richness and tenderness, and its creaming with sugar traps air for a light texture.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the sponge once the batter sets during steaming.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, aerated creamed mixture.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter to help the pudding rise and become light.
The step that matters
Folding in the flour. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the creamed butter and eggs. Overmixing knocks out this air and produces a dense, heavy pudding instead of a light one.
“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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