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Dessert

Strawberry Puff Pudding

A steamed dessert made with layers of batter, strawberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Strawberry Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Stir baking powder into flour and add milk gradually until a stiff batter forms. Mix in a pinch of salt.

Layer and steam

  1. Grease six cups with butter.

  2. Place a spoonful of batter in each cup, followed by a thick layer of strawberries, then 2 teaspoons of sugar, and another thin layer of batter.

  3. Repeat the layering until all batter is used, filling cups no more than two-thirds full.

  4. Steam the cups over boiling water for 30 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately with sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 batter's structure, setting into the body of the pudding as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist batter, helping the pudding rise and puff.
Strawberries
Add fruit moisture and tart flavour that cooks into the layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Filling cups no more than two-thirds full. Batter containing baking powder expands as it heats and gas forms. Leaving room at the top lets the pudding rise without overflowing or becoming dense and squashed against the rim.

“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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