Name: Baroness Pudding
Ingredients: 2 ½ cups suet, minced; ½ cup breadcrumbs; 1 ½ cups raisins, pitted and halved; 5 cups milk; ½ cup flour; 1 teaspoon baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baroness Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, mix the minced suet, breadcrumbs, raisins, milk, flour, baking powder, and salt until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Steam and serve

Steam the pudding for 4 hours.
Serve with sifted sugar or sweet sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Milk and flour 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

Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it steams.
Breadcrumbs: Absorb liquid and give the pudding a soft, light body.
Flour: Provides structure so the pudding holds together when turned out.
Baking powder: Releases gas during steaming to lighten the texture.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

“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.