Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Batter Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Grease a baking dish with oil.
Make the batter
In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with the flour and salt.
Stir in the milk until smooth.
Bake
Pour the batter into the dish and bake immediately for about 30 minutes or until golden.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 set during baking, giving structure and richness.
- Flour
- Provides starch that gelatinises and, with egg proteins, sets the pudding's structure.
- Milk
- Supplies moisture that turns to steam, helping the batter puff while the eggs set it.
The step that matters
Bake immediately after pouring. The batter relies on heat and steam from the hot oven to puff and set. If it sits before baking, the rise weakens and the pudding turns out flatter and denser.
“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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