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Boiled Batter Pudding

A custard pudding made by boiling a stiff batter of flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and optional fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 20 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 ↓

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together a pint of flour and a teaspoonful of baking powder into a deep dish, sprinkle in a little salt, adding also a tablespoonful of melted butter.

  2. Stir into this gradually a pint of milk; when quite smooth, add four eggs, yolks and whites beaten separately.

  3. Now add enough more flour to make a very stiff batter.

  4. If liked, any kind of fruit may be stirred into this; a pint of berries or sliced fruit.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil two hours.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar, wine sauce, or any sweet sauce.

Make the cream pudding

  1. Take five tablespoonfuls out of a quart of cream or rich milk and mix them with two large spoonfuls of fine flour.

  2. Set the rest of the milk to boil, flavoring it with bitter almonds broken up.

  3. When it has boiled hard, take it off, strain it and stir it in the cold milk and flour.

  4. Set it away to cool and beat well eight yolks and four whites of eggs; add them to the milk and stir in, at the last, a glass of brandy or white wine, a teaspoonful of powdered nutmeg and half a cupful of sugar.

  5. Butter a large bowl or mold; pour in the mixture; tie a cloth tightly over it; put it into a pot of boiling water and boil it two hours, replenishing the pot with hot water from a tea-kettle.

  6. When the pudding is done, let it get cool before you turn it out.

  7. Eat it with butter and sugar stirred together to a cream and flavored with lemon juice or orange.

Make the custard

  1. Pour one quart of milk in a deep pan and let the pan stand in a kettle of boiling water, while you beat to a cream eight eggs and six tablespoonfuls of fine sugar and a teaspoon of flour.

  2. Then stir the eggs and sugar into the milk and continue stirring until it begins to thicken.

  3. Then remove the pan from the boiling water, scrape down the sides, and stir to the bottom until it begins to cool.

  4. Add a tablespoonful of peach-water, or any other flavor you may prefer.

  5. Pour into little cups and, when cold, serve.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

908Calories
28 gProtein
32 gFat
125 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff batter structure that holds the pudding together as it boils.
Eggs
Set with heat to give the pudding and custard body, and thicken the custard.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and turn light.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the base of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the eggs and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over boiling water until it begins to thicken. Egg proteins set with gentle heat; if the custard gets too hot or is not stirred steadily, the eggs can curdle and it will turn grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the peach

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

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

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