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Dessert

Orange and Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, and butter, served with orange marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Orange and Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour with cold milk until smooth.

  2. Add whisked eggs, salt, sugar, and oiled butter; mix well.

  3. Pour batter into a buttered basin, dredge with flour, and tie in a floured cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Plunge into boiling water and boil for 1.5 hours, adding more boiling water if needed.

  2. Let pudding stand for 2-3 minutes after removing from water before turning out.

  3. Serve on a hot dish topped with ½ pound of orange marmalade.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Starch thickens the batter and, with the eggs, sets the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Eggs
Proteins set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that turns the batter into a soft, tender pudding.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and keeps the pudding tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and a little moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a steady boil. Plunging the wrapped pudding into boiling water and topping up with more boiling water keeps the temperature high and even. Water that drops below a boil cooks the pudding slowly and unevenly, leaving it heavy or underset.

“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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