Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Prune Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Pour the milk into a bowl and add the beaten eggs.
Stir in enough flour to create a thick paste.
Sprinkle a little flour over the prunes and mix them into the paste.
Boil and serve
Transfer the mixture into a floured pudding cloth.
Place the cloth in a saucepan of water and boil for two hours.
Turn the pudding out onto a dish and serve with butter, sugar, or wine 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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,645 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk and eggs into a paste that holds the prunes.
- Prunes
- Add fruit flavour and a soft, moist texture throughout the pudding.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid base and adds richness to the batter.
The step that matters
Securing the pudding cloth. If the cloth is not well floured and tightly tied, water can soak into the pudding and make it soggy, while a loose cloth can let the pudding swell and burst. Flouring the cloth also helps a crust form so the pudding releases cleanly.
“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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