Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Fruit Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
In a bowl, combine milk, egg, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Add flour gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.
Fold in the tart fruit.
Steam and serve
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.
Steam for 1 hour.
Serve with your choice of rich sauce.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Egg
- Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during steaming.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter so the baking soda releases gas and helps the pudding rise.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished pudding.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the stiff batter that holds the pudding together.
The step that matters
Add flour gradually until the batter is stiff. Too much flour at once makes the batter dense and hard to combine evenly, while too little leaves it loose and prone to collapse, so the texture and rise depend on adding it slowly.
“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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