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Mushroom Pudding

A savory pudding made with flour, butter, mushrooms, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, 3 oz. of butter, and baking powder.

  2. Add enough cold water to form a dough.

Assemble and cook

  1. Grease a pudding basin and line it with the dough.

  2. Place the mushrooms in the basin, add the remaining butter, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Cover and boil for 1.5 hours.

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.

  1. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 dough that lines the basin and holds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the dough and filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the dough rise and lighten as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Provide the main filling, releasing moisture that cooks into the pudding.

The step that matters

Adding enough cold water to form the dough. Too little water leaves a crumbly dough that will not hold its shape, while too much makes it sticky and tough. Adding water gradually until the dough just comes together gives a dough that lines the basin neatly and stays tender when boiled.

“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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