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 ↓
Cherry Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Mix the flour and baking powder in a bowl.
Add enough water to form a soft dough.
Fill the cups
Butter the cups and drop a little dough in.
Add some stoned cherries, then cover with more dough to half fill the cup.
Steam and serve
Steam for 30 minutes.
Serve with sweetened cream.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- Flour
- Provides the main structure of the dough as its proteins and starches set during steaming.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas when moistened and heated, helping the dough rise into a light pudding.
- Stoned cherries
- Add tart-sweet flavour and juices that moisten the dough as they cook.
The step that matters
Add enough water to form a soft dough. Flour needs enough liquid to hydrate its starch and proteins. A stiff dough rises less in the steam and turns dense, while a very wet one becomes gummy.
“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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