Name: Batter Pudding with Fruit
Ingredients: ¼ pound flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ pint milk; 2 eggs; ¼ pound fruit (e.g., damsons); ½ ounce butter; Sugar to taste

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 with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine ¼ pound of flour and ¼ teaspoon of salt in a bowl.
Gradually stir in ½ pint of milk until the mixture is liquid.
Beat the batter with a spoon to make it lighter.
Break one egg into a cup and add the egg to the batter while mixing lightly.
Break the second egg into a cup and add the second egg to the batter while mixing thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

Grease a 1½ pint pie dish with butter.
Pour the batter into the pie dish.
Clean the fruit with a cloth and sprinkle the fruit into the batter.
Dot the top with two or three bits of butter.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven.
Sprinkle sugar over the top before serving.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 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 batter's structure as it sets during baking.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Milk: Provides the liquid that turns the flour into a pourable batter and adds moisture.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the top brown and the dish stay moist.
Fruit: Adds flavour and moisture to the pudding as it bakes into the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the batter with the eggs added. Mixing the eggs in thoroughly and evenly spreads them through the batter so the pudding sets uniformly instead of in pockets. Adding eggs gently at first helps prevent lumps in the flour mixture.

“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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Batter Pudding with Fruit