Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Batter Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add the milk.
Stir in the flour until smooth and scalded through.
Remove from heat, beat the yolks with a spoonful of cold milk, and stir them in.
Add the sugar, lemon extract, rusk, and baking powder.
Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff, then fold them in last.
Bake and serve
Place the pudding pan in a larger pan filled with boiling water and bake for 1 hour.
Serve with sherry wine sauce or fruit sauce.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and bind the batter; whipped whites lift the pudding with trapped air.
- Flour
- Starch sets as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and structure.
- Butter
- Fat adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the batter.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the whites hold their stiff structure.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and stay light.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour and starch, forming a smooth, pourable base.
The step that matters
Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped stiff, and that air lifts the pudding. Stirring them in hard or too long deflates the foam, leaving a dense, flat result.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar, bread):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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