Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Flour Pudding

A pudding made by boiling a mixture of milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Flour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk and enough flour to thicken.

  2. Add salt and the yolks of the beaten eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the dissolved saleratus and a small piece of butter.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased mold or bag.

  2. Boil in a pot of boiling water for 1 hour, ensuring the mold is floured inside.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 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
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites beaten separately add lightness and help it rise.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk into a batter that holds its shape while boiling.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the pudding its body.
Saleratus (baking soda)
Reacts with moisture and heat to release gas, helping the pudding rise and become light.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are intact, so folding them in gently keeps the trapped air from collapsing, which preserves lightness in the finished pudding.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes