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Dessert

Steamed Battee Pudding

A steamed pudding made from eggs, sugar, milk, flour, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar, optionally with sliced apples or peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Steamed Battee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the milk, flour, melted butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar; mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter over sliced apples or peaches in a three-pint basin.

  2. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Serve with hot 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. 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets during steaming.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is cooked.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to release gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the pudding rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Steam must keep the water boiling steadily around the basin for the full time. If it drops, the pudding may cook unevenly or turn dense and heavy in the centre.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, flour, butter, cream):

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

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