Name: Boiled Berry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons butter; berries (your choice)

Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Berry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and butter in a bowl until crumbly.
Place the berries at the bottom of a pan.
Spread the flour mixture over the berries.

Boil

Cover and boil for 2 hours.

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.

Cream + buttertop 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

All-purpose flour: Forms the pudding's structure as it cooks and sets.
Cream of tartar: Reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise and gives a slight tang.
Baking soda: Produces gas with the acid in cream of tartar, helping the pudding rise.
Butter: Adds fat that makes the crumbly dough tender and rich.
Berries: Provide moisture, sweetness, and fruity flavor that soak into the pudding.

“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.