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Dessert

Hasty Pudding

A simple baked pudding made with eggs, flour, sugar, water, and optional flavorings, fruit, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hasty Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  2. Add the hot water, flour, and flavoring to the yolk mixture.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a pudding dish with any kind of fruit.

  2. Pour the batter over the fruit and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Egg whites beaten stiff trap air, giving the pudding its light, risen structure.
Flour
Sets during baking to give the pudding its body and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks thicken when beaten.
Hot water
Adds moisture and helps the batter loosen and cook through.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whites' trapped air, so the pudding bakes denser and less light. Folding in gently keeps the air bubbles that make it rise.

“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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