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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, and butter, served with melted butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix sifted flour and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add ½ cup milk and mix until smooth.

  3. Beat in eggs and add more milk until batter reaches proper thickness.

  4. Grease a basin with fresh butter and pour batter in.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover basin with a cloth and boil for 1 hour 15 minutes.

  2. Turn pudding onto a plate and serve with melted butter, sugar, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Optionally add white wine or vinegar to 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 starchy structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during cooking to give the pudding its body.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and loosens the batter to the right thickness.
Butter
Greases the basin so the cooked pudding releases cleanly, and adds richness when melted.

The step that matters

Adjusting the batter thickness. Flour absorbs liquid at different rates, so the batter must be checked and loosened with milk before cooking. Too thick gives a dense pudding; too thin fails to set firmly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

More batter pudding recipes

Boiled 71Baked 53Apple 30Steamed 30Fruit 19Meat 9 See all 241 →

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