Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Plum Pudding with Snow
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Mix together the flour, sweet cream, raisins, currants, mashed potatoes, brown sugar, and milk.
Work the mixture thoroughly and season it.
Quickly mix in the clear snow throughout the mixture.
Boil
Put the pudding in a bag and boil for 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,180 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
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Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
- Raisins
- Add moisture, sweetness and chewy texture to the finished pudding.
- Mashed potatoes
- Add moisture and body, helping the pudding stay tender and soft.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavour.
- Sweet cream
- Adds richness and fat, making the pudding moist and tender.
The step that matters
Quickly mix in the clear snow. Clear snow is a leavening agent that starts working once combined with the wet mixture, so it should be folded in quickly and evenly to keep the pudding light and to distribute gas bubbles throughout before the mixture is bagged and boiled.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, raisin, potato, sugar, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, raisin, potato, sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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