Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Hasty Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Fill a kettle with boiling water.
Add coarse sea salt to the water.
Slowly stir in cornmeal until thickened.
Add a handful of wheat flour at the end.
Boil for half an hour and stir with a wooden spoon.
Slice and fry
Once cold, slice the pudding.
Fry the slices until brown.
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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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Its starch thickens in the hot water and sets into the pudding's main body.
- Wheat flour
- Adds extra starch so the pudding firms up enough to hold its shape when sliced.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the cornmeal starch so it can swell, gelatinise and thicken the mixture.
The step that matters
Slowly stir in the cornmeal. Cornmeal dropped into hot water in one go forms lumps, because the outer starch swells and seals off the dry centre. Adding it slowly while stirring keeps the grains separated so the mixture thickens evenly.
“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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