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Dessert

Quick Puff Pudding

A quick steamed pudding made with a soft batter, berries or sauce, and a sweetened egg‑butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Quick Puff Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Gradually add milk until the mixture is very soft.

Fill and steam

  1. Grease cups and fill each with a spoonful of batter.

  2. Add a spoonful of berries or sauce, then cover with another spoonful of batter.

  3. Steam for twenty minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together the eggs, butter, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Stir in the boiling milk and strawberries.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming so the puddings rise and lighten.
Eggs
Help bind and enrich the sauce, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the sauce beat smooth with the butter.
Strawberries
Add fruit flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the batter very soft before steaming. A very soft batter with enough liquid lets the baking powder lift the puddings evenly. A stiff batter stays dense and heavy after steaming.

Swap the apple

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

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

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