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Dessert

Boiled Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, and salt, cooked in a pudding bag for two hours.

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

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Stir in enough milk to make a thick batter.

  3. Break in the eggs and beat well, then add the remaining milk.

Boil and serve

  1. Prepare a kettle of boiling water with a tin pie plate at the bottom.

  2. Grease and flour the pudding bag, then pour in the batter.

  3. Tie the bag tightly, leaving an inch of space above the batter.

  4. Plunge the bag into the boiling water and boil steadily for 2 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the starch structure that sets the batter into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during boiling, giving the pudding structure and richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and makes up most of the batter, providing moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Tie the bag tightly, leaving an inch of space above the batter.. The batter expands slightly as it cooks, so the space gives room to rise. A loose or overfilled bag can let water in and leak the batter out during boiling.

“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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