Skip to main content
Dessert

Batter Pudding

A baked batter pudding served with a strawberry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Batter 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Add butter, beaten egg, and sweet milk; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, work together 4 tablespoons of butter and 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Add 1 unbeaten egg and beat until light.

  3. Fold in 1 cup of strawberries and mix well.

Serve

  1. Cut the pudding into squares and serve with the strawberry 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in both the pudding and the sauce.
Egg
Binds the batter and, when beaten into the sauce, lightens its texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form a smooth batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it become creamy when worked with butter.

The step that matters

Beating the unbeaten egg into the butter and sugar. Egg must be incorporated gradually into the creamed butter and sugar so the mixture stays smooth; adding it too fast can cause curdling and a grainy sauce.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes