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Dessert

White Pudding

A steamed sweet pudding made with flour, baking powder, milk, water, and apples or preserves.

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 ↓

White Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  2. Mix the flour and baking powder with milk and enough water to form a soft dough.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter a pint mold well.

  2. Place a layer of dough in the mold, followed by a layer of preserves or sliced apples, then another layer of dough.

  3. Cover with greased paper and place in a steamer.

  4. Cook for 1 ½ hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with wine or lemon 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. 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 dough structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist dough, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the dough, softening the crumb.
Preserves or sliced apples
Provides fruit flavor and moisture between the dough layers.

The step that matters

Cover with greased paper and place in a steamer. Steam keeps the pudding moist while it cooks. If the cover is not sealed or the steamer runs dry, the surface can dry out and the dough can cook unevenly.

Swap the apple

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

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

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