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 ↓
Dumplings and Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Make and boil
Mix ½ pound of flour with 4 eggs until smooth.
Ensure the batter does not stick to a knife when served.
Boil the batter in a mold, ensuring it does not touch the kettle sides and the water remains boiling.
Serve
Once cooked, turn the pudding out of the dish, bottom side up.
Sprinkle finely sifted sugar over the pudding before serving.
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).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 starchy structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm body.
- Finely sifted sugar
- Adds sweetness to the finished pudding on the surface.
The step that matters
Keep the batter off the kettle sides and the water boiling. Boiling water surrounds the mold and cooks the pudding evenly. If the mold touches the hot metal sides, that area can overcook or scorch, and if the water stops boiling, the pudding cooks slowly and unevenly.
“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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