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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Once boiling, add the butter and stir in the flour mixed with a little cold milk to form a soft paste.

  3. When the sauce thickens, remove from heat and let it cool.

  4. Once cooled, add the well-beaten yolks of the eggs, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a 2-quart pudding dish and pour in the mixture.

  2. Place the dish in a pan of boiling water, about 2 inches deep.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 35 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately with wine 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. Flour + buttertop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a soft paste that gives the pudding body and structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that lifts the pudding. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate it and make the pudding dense.

“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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