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Dessert

Steam Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from a batter of milk, egg, butter, flour, and baking powder, layered with fruit and served with a fruit sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Steam Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl. Add the milk and melted butter to the egg, mixing well.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and a pinch of coarse sea salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until smooth.

Assemble and steam

  1. In a greased dish, pour half of the batter, then layer with apples or any fruit. Top with the remaining batter.

  2. Steam the pudding for one hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, drain canned fruit and use the juice, stirring in a little flour to thicken. Add a small piece of butter to the sauce and cook until hot.

  2. Serve the pudding warm with the 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it sets when steamed.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps give the pudding a set, tender structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding for one hour. Steam must be kept steadily going for the full hour so the batter cooks through and sets. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the centre dense or undercooked.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, flour, sauce. 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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