Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Batter Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with sour cream, flour, milk, eggs, candied peel, raisins, and sponge cake layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix sour cream and flour until smooth.

  2. Add milk, beaten egg yolks, salt, and baking soda, and mix well.

  3. Pour into a buttered mold.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

Make the custard

  1. Soak crumbs in milk.

  2. Heat to a boil.

  3. Add corn-starch mixed with cold milk.

  4. Cook for 1 minute.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Beat until smooth and cool.

  7. Whip in egg yolks and flavoring.

  8. Fold in beaten egg whites.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter the mold.

  2. Layer with candied peel, raisins, and sponge cake.

  3. Pour the milk mixture over the layers until the mold is full.

  4. Let stand for 2 hours.

  5. Cover and boil in water for 1 hour.

  6. Allow to rest.

Serve

  1. Remove from the mold.

  2. Serve hot with sweet 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure when set by heat and richness through the yolks, and lift through the folded whites.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch and gluten that build the body of the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, tang and richness, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acid to release gas, helping the batter rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the crumbs and cake, giving a tender texture.

The step that matters

Fold in beaten egg whites. Gentle folding keeps the air trapped in the whites, so the custard stays light instead of deflating into a dense texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, milk, egg, raisin, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes