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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding with a light, airy texture, served with pudding sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sponge 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.

Make the batter

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar, butter, and flour until light and smooth.

  3. Once the milk is boiling, stir in the batter and remove from heat.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish set in a larger dish of hot water.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

  3. Serve with your choice of pudding 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks and thickens into a soft, custard-like body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and help set the pudding; whites add lift for a light, airy texture.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its structure as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich mouthfeel and a smoother texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and promotes light browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the pudding its rise. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes up 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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