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Dessert

Steamed Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from sour milk, eggs, butter, baking powder, and flour, served with sugar sauce.

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 ↓

Steamed Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, eggs, butter, and baking powder.

  2. Add flour gradually until you achieve a thick batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour or more until cooked through.

  3. Serve with sugar 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. 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).

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
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking powder to help the batter rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pudding becomes light rather than dense.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure once it is mixed into the batter.

The step that matters

Steam until cooked through. Steaming gently heats the batter from the outside in, so the pudding sets evenly. Stopping too early leaves the centre wet and dense, while the set eggs and starch give the pudding its structure.

“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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