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 ↓
Puff 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 the custard base
In a pot, bring the milk to a boil.
In a bowl, mix the melted butter with the flour until smooth.
Stir the butter-flour mixture into the boiling milk.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar, then add to the mixture.
Fold and bake
In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the mixture.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.
Serve
Serve immediately with your choice of sauce.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Eggs
- Whites whipped to stiff peaks trap air, which lifts the pudding as it bakes.
- All-purpose flour
- Starch thickens the milk mixture so it holds its shape around the air.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and adds flavor to the egg yolks.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that makes the pudding rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the pudding bakes flat and dense instead of light.
“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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