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Dessert

Battek Pudding

A baked pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, flour, and raisins or apples.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Battek Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and melted butter.

  3. Add the buttermilk, baking powder (if using sweet milk), baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  4. Gradually add flour until you achieve a stiff batter.

  5. Fold in the raisins or sliced apples.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake for about 30–40 minutes, or until golden brown.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 baking.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Flour
Provides structure so the stiff batter holds its shape while baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing tenderness and flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour must be added slowly until the batter is stiff but not overworked. Too much flour makes the pudding dense, while too little leaves it loose and unable to hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, buttermilk, nutmeg, flour, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, buttermilk, nutmeg, flour, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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