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Preserve

Delicate Cake Pudding

A custard-like cake made with milk, flour, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon juice, and baked in a water bath.

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 ↓

Delicate Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix flour and sugar together, then add boiling milk to make a smooth mixture.

  3. Stir in the butter and the yolks of the eggs; beat well.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking pan placed in a larger pan of water.

  2. For the sauce, mix butter and flour, then beat in sugar and the whites of 2 eggs.

  3. Add the juice of a lemon and pour in boiling water to combine.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whites folded in beaten give lift and a light structure.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture into a smooth batter that holds its shape as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture in the batter and sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps give the batter body and a golden colour as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that, with the starch, forms the smooth base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if beaten stiff and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out the air, so the pudding rises less and turns denser.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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