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Dessert

Swedish Pudding

A steamed custard made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swedish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, salt, and flour.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into cups and steam for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with strawberry 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its structure once set.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries richness and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps creaming trap air in the butter.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites add lift and a light texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. The whites hold air bubbles that make the pudding light. Folding gently keeps those bubbles intact, while vigorous stirring deflates the batter and leaves a dense 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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