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Dessert

Steamed Battee Pudding

A steamed pudding made with eggs, sour milk, baking soda, salt, fruit, and served with sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,399 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Steamed Battee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat eggs and mix in sour milk.

  2. Add baking soda and salt, stirring until thick.

  3. Fold in fruit.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour mixture into greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 2 hours.

  3. Serve with sweetened cream.

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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during steaming.
Sour milk
Provides liquid and acidity that reacts with baking soda to lighten the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, helping the pudding rise.
Fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness and flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter until thick. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk right away, so the batter should be mixed promptly and the mold filled before the gas escapes. Stirring until thick gives the batter enough body to hold the fruit evenly during steaming.

“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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