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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, and salt.

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 ↓

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. In a bowl, stir together flour and sugar with milk until smooth.

  2. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until it resembles pancake batter.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the melted butter and salt.

  4. Let it cool, then add the eggs beaten separately.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Serve hot 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. 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

Eggs
Add structure and lift to the custard as they set during baking.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture and gives the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly at the edges.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that forms the custard base and keeps it moist.

The step that matters

Cook in a double boiler until it resembles pancake batter. Gentle, indirect heat thickens the flour mixture evenly without scorching or lumps. Cooking it too hot can scorch the milk and make the flour grainy, which affects the final texture.

“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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