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Preserve

Feather Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Feather Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and a little salt, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk.

  4. Combine the baking powder and flour, then add to the mixture.

  5. Add the flavoring and mix until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold.

  2. Steam for one hour.

  3. Serve hot with 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. Butter + milktop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 they set during steaming.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the pudding cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
White sugar
Creams with the butter to add sweetness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a greased mold. Leaving room for the pudding to rise and greasing the mold prevents sticking. Batter filled too full can overflow, and an ungreased mold can cause the pudding to stick and tear when turned out.

“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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