Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Damson Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the crust
Make a suet crust with 1 lb. of flour as per the recipe provided.
Line a buttered pudding basin with a portion of the crust.
Fill and seal
Fill the basin with the damsons and sweeten them.
Cover with the lid and pinch the edges of the crust together.
Boil
Tie a floured cloth over the pudding and place it in boiling water.
Boil for 2 to 3 hours.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Damsons
- Provide the tart fruit filling whose juices soften and flavour the pudding.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and balances the tartness of the damsons.
- Suet crust
- Forms a rich, tender pastry casing that encloses the fruit as it steams.
- Flour
- Gives the crust its structure so it holds the fruit while cooking.
The step that matters
Pinching the crust edges closed. A tight seal keeps the fruit juices inside and stops boiling water getting into the pudding, which would make the filling watery and the crust soggy.
“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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