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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from sour cream, buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, flour, and optional dried fruit or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sour cream, buttermilk, eggs, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add flour until the batter can drop nicely from a spoon.

  3. Fold in dried fruit or nuts if desired.

Steam and serve

  1. Drop the batter into cups.

  2. Place the cups in a steamer.

  3. Steam for 40 minutes.

  4. Serve with sugar and 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.

  1. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutstop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together886 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help give the cooked pudding its set structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream and buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the pudding.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, richness, and a tangy acidity that activates the baking soda.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thick batter together while it steams.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter can drop nicely from a spoon. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and heavy, while too little leaves it loose and unable to hold its shape. Adding it gradually lets you stop at the right thickness.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, buttermilk, egg, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, buttermilk, egg, 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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