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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with buttermilk or sour cream batter, sugar, eggs, and flour, topped with fruit and served with rich sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 129 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Batter 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix buttermilk or sour cream with baking soda.

  3. Add beaten eggs, sugar, and salt; stir well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick like cake batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a small baking pan and pour in half the batter.

  2. Spread fruit over the batter, then add the remaining batter on top.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  4. Serve hot with rich 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. Buttermilk + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together129 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk or sour cream
Adds acidity that reacts with the baking soda and gives a tender, moist crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic dairy to produce gas that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together once baked.
Fruit
Adds moisture and fruity flavor, sitting between the two batter layers.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the batter is thick like cake batter. Adding flour gradually lets you stop at the right thickness. Too much flour makes the pudding dense and dry, while too little leaves it loose and unable to hold the fruit.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, egg, sugar, flour, 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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