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 ↓
Plum Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the plums
Sprinkle 1¾ pounds of sugar over 1 quart of seeded plums.
Let the plums stand for 1 hour.
Drain off the juice from the plums.
Make the batter
Mix the drained juice with 1 pint of rich sweet milk.
Beat 4 eggs in a bowl and add the beaten eggs to the milk mixture.
Combine 2 teaspoons of melted butter with ½ cup of flour and a little of the milk mixture until smooth.
Add a pinch of salt to the mixture.
Pour the mixture over the plums.
Bake and serve
Bake until brown.
Serve with cream or the drained fruit syrup.
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 + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Plum + milktop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together406 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Plums
- Provide the fruit and flavor that the custard-like batter surrounds.
- Eggs
- Set the batter as it bakes, giving the pudding structure.
- Flour
- Thickens the batter so it holds together rather than running.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juice during standing.
- Rich sweet milk
- Forms the liquid base that the eggs and flour set into.
The step that matters
Combine the butter and flour with milk until smooth. Mixing the flour and melted butter with a little milk first prevents lumps, so the flour disperses evenly before it is blended into the batter and thickens it.
Swap the plum
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Plumthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour. 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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