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 ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Bring the milk and salt to a boil.
Sprinkle in the flour while stirring with a fork until smooth.
Continue boiling for 10 minutes to improve texture.
Serve
Serve on a hot dish with butter and sprinkle with sugar, jam, or treacle.
For a richer pudding, add an egg after cooking and beat well.
Optionally, serve with clotted cream.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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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
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that thickens into the pudding.
- Flour
- Thickens the milk as its starch gelatinizes during boiling, giving the pudding body.
- Egg
- Adds richness and body when beaten into the cooked pudding.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, melting into the hot pudding for flavour.
The step that matters
Sprinkling in the flour while stirring. Flour added to hot milk clumps easily if dropped in at once. Adding it slowly while stirring with a fork keeps the starch dispersed, so the pudding cooks smooth rather than lumpy.
“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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