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 ↓
Cherry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Make a dough with flour, baking powder, salt, and enough milk or water to form a paste.
Roll out the dough to ¼ inch thick.
Assemble the pudding
Butter a large bowl.
Line the bowl with the dough, leaving enough to fold over the top.
Fill the bowl with cherries and sugar.
Gather the dough over the top.
Sprinkle the dough with flour.
Cover with a linen cloth.
Secure the cloth with string.
Cook and serve
Place the bowl in a pot of boiling water.
Cook for 1.5 hours.
Serve with sweet 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.
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 + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the dough's structure, setting into a firm wrapper around the fruit.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during cooking, helping the dough rise and lighten.
- Cherries
- Provide the fruit filling, releasing juice that moistens the pudding as it cooks.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and helps balance their tartness.
The step that matters
Securing the cloth over the bowl. A loose cloth can let boiling water seep into the bowl and soak the dough. A snug cover keeps the steam trapped so the pudding cooks through evenly and stays moist.
“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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