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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A sweet milk-based pudding thickened with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sponge 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 base

  1. Cook the flour and milk together until thick.

  2. While hot, add the butter and sugar, stirring until melted.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour into a pudding dish and bake for 30 minutes in a water bath at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Serve with hard or foaming 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 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
Beaten whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the custard and help it set.
Flour
Cooked with milk, it thickens the base and gives the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and adds to the pudding's flavor and browning.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.. Whites hold air that gives the pudding its light rise. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser, flatter result.

“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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