Name: Cherry Puddino
Ingredients: 2 cups flour; 2 teaspoons baking powder; water (enough for a soft dough); butter (for greasing cups); stoned cherries; sweetened cream (for serving)

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherry Puddino

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and enough water to form a soft dough.
Grease cups with butter and drop in a little dough, followed by some stoned cherries, then more dough to half fill the cup.

Cook and serve

Steam the cups for 30 minutes.
Serve with sweetened cream.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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: Forms the bulk of the dough, giving the pudding its structure once steamed.
Baking powder: Releases gas during steaming, helping the dough rise and become light.
Stoned cherries: Provide fruit flavour and juicy pockets within the steamed dough.

“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.