Name: Steamed Fruit Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup flour; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup fruit of your choice; sweetened cream for serving

Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt until well combined.
Stir in the fruit until evenly distributed.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

Steam for 2 hours.
Serve warm with sweetened cream.

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.

Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the structure of the pudding as it sets during steaming.
Baking soda: Reacts with acidic components to release gas, helping the pudding rise and turn lighter.
Fruit: Adds moisture, sweetness, and flavour 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.