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Dessert

Railway Pudding

A sweet baked pudding made with flour, baking powder, sugar, eggs, and milk, served with jam or stewed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Railway 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and sugar.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs well and add the milk.

Make and bake

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients until you achieve a moist consistency.

  2. Pour the mixture into a shallow baking tin and bake for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Once baked, split the pudding open with a hot knife.

  2. Spread jam or stewed fruit inside, cut into pieces, and sift sugar over the top.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that form the body of the pudding.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture, so the batter becomes a soft, pourable mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until you achieve a moist consistency. Mixing only until combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the pudding tough and dense.

“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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