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Dessert

Boiled Batter-pudding

A boiled pudding made from eggs, flour, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Butter a pudding mold or an earthen bowl generously.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs until creamy.

  3. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt to the yolks and mix well.

  4. Gradually mix in the milk until smooth.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the batter into the buttered mold and seal it tightly.

  2. If using a bowl, do not fill it completely and cover it with a wet, floured cloth tied under the bottom.

  3. Place the mold in boiling water and boil steadily for 2 hours.

  4. Serve the pudding immediately after cooking.

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. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Whites are folded in for lightness, and yolks enrich the batter and help bind it.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that sets the pudding as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Moistens the flour and forms the batter's liquid base, adding richness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser result.

“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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