Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Roly-Poly Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the paste
In a bowl, mix the flour, suet, salt, and baking powder.
Add enough butter milk or water to form a stiff paste.
Roll the paste into a thin sheet on a floured surface.
Assemble the roll
Grease a bowl or melon-shaped dish with dripping.
Line the dish with the paste, cutting the edges evenly.
Place a spoonful of jam in the bottom, then layer with more jam and paste until full.
Wet the edges of the last piece of paste to seal it.
Steam and serve
Cover with buttered paper and place in a pot with ½ inch of boiling water.
Cover the pot and steam for 2 hours, then turn out.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the paste that wraps the jam.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the paste tender and rich during steaming.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas that helps the paste rise and lighten as it steams.
- Jam
- Provides the sweet filling and moisture that soaks into the paste.
The step that matters
Seal the edges of the last piece of paste. If the wet edges do not seal firmly, the jam can leak out during steaming and the roll may open or lose its shape.
“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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