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Dessert

Fruit Puff Pudding

A steamed batter pudding with fruit, topped with a butter‑egg‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Sift the mixture and gradually stir in milk until the batter is very soft.

Assemble and steam

  1. Grease the cups and place them in a steamer.

  2. Add a spoonful of batter to each cup, then add a spoonful of berries or steamed apples.

  3. Cover with another spoonful of batter and steam for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together the eggs, butter, sugar, and boiling milk, then mix in the strawberries.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the pudding together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the puddings rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the sauce as it thickens.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky sauce texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the tartness of the strawberries.
Berries or steamed apples
Provide fruit flavour and moisture inside each pudding.

The step that matters

Keep the batter very soft. A very soft batter with enough liquid lets the baking powder lift the puddings evenly while steam cooks them. A stiff batter would rise poorly and turn dense.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, butter, egg, sauce, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter, egg, sauce, sugar. 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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