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Dessert

Nut Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, nuts, eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Nut Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the chopped nuts.

  2. Whisk the egg yolks until light and add to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder, then beat into the mixture thoroughly.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a cup and steam the mixture for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with chocolate 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. 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. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a light, creamy base when creamed.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter while the whites add lift and airiness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together after steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter for a soft texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that gives the pudding its lightness. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a dense result.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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