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 ↓
Meat Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Finely mince the suet and dredge with a little flour as you mince.
Mix the suet with flour, salt, and enough water to make a smooth, pliant paste.
Roll out the paste to about ⅓ inch thick.
Grease a basin with butter and line it with the rolled paste.
Add the meat and cold jelly gravy to the basin.
Securely close the top with the paste and tie the basin in a pudding cloth.
Steam the pudding very slowly for 3 to 4 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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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
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