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Dessert

Scalded Batter Pudding

A simple pudding made from flour, eggs, milk, and salt, cooked slowly in a buttered vessel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Scalded Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix salt with the flour.

  2. Set aside cold milk.

  3. Boil the remaining milk.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually pour the boiled milk into the flour.

  2. Stir with a fork until well mixed. Do not use a spoon for mixing; use only a fork.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Whisk the eggs separately until very thorough.

  5. Stir the eggs into the mixture when it is just warm.

Cook

  1. Boil for 1½ hours in a well-buttered cloth or bowl, leaving room for the pudding to rise.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Eggs
Set when cooked, adding structure and richness to the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in when the mixture is just warm. If the mixture is still hot, the beaten eggs can scramble and become grainy. If it is too cold, they will not blend evenly. Waiting for a just-warm mixture lets the eggs combine smoothly and set evenly during boiling.

“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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