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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A baked sponge pudding made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, milk, salt, and flavoring.

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

Sponge Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Mix sugar and flour.

  2. Wet with a little cold milk and stir into boiling milk.

  3. Cook until thickened and smooth.

  4. Add butter and mix well.

  5. Stir into the beaten yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites, salt, and flavoring extract.

  2. Bake in a shallow dish set in a pan of hot water at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes, until set and brown.

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. Flour + milktop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base and whites, beaten stiff, lighten the pudding as it sets.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture into a smooth base that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer texture and a tender, smooth crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its light rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites makes the pudding dense.

“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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