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Dessert

Fairy Pudding

A light, airy custard-like pudding made with flour, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Fairy 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. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk gradually to form a smooth batter.

  3. Add the egg yolks to the batter.

  4. Dissolve the baking powder in 1 teaspoon of milk and mix it into the batter.

  5. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter just before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with hard or soft 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the light batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Set during baking to give structure, and whipped whites add lift to the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid so the flour hydrates into a smooth, pourable batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make it rise and become light in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that gives lift. Folding gently, just before baking, keeps that air from deflating, so the pudding rises instead of turning 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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