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Dessert

Pound Cake Pudding

A sweet pudding made by mixing sugar, butter, milk, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and fruit, then baking or steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Pound Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately, then add to the mixture.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  5. Sift the flour with the cream of tartar and fold it into the batter.

  6. Add the fruit and mix gently.

Cook

  1. Bake or steam for one hour.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Add structure and richness, and help the batter rise and set when cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that works with the baking soda to help the batter rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the milk. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the acid from the cream of tartar. Lumps can leave pockets of bitter flavour and uneven rising.

“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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