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Dessert

Feather Pudding

A steamed pudding made from butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, and jelly filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Feather Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten egg, milk, salt, and baking powder; mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is similar to cake batter.

Fill and steam

  1. Grease cups well and place about 1 teaspoon of jelly in each cup.

  2. Fill each cup half full with the batter.

  3. Steam the cups for one hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the pudding a tender, rich crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter reach a smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Filling the cups half full. Baking powder makes the batter rise during steaming, so overfilling can cause it to spill over or become dense. Leaving room lets the pudding expand evenly.

“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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