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Dessert

Another Batter Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from eggs, flour, milk, and jelly, cooked in a cloth or basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the yolks of the eggs with the flour until smooth.

  2. Thin the batter with milk until it reaches the consistency of cream.

  3. Whisk the egg whites separately and then stir them into the batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in a floured cloth or buttered basin for 1 hour.

  2. Before serving, cut the top into large dice halfway through the pudding.

  3. Pour the jelly over the pudding and serve immediately.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whisked whites trap air for a light, risen texture, while yolks enrich the batter.
Flour
Forms the starch structure that thickens the batter and holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Milk
Thins the batter to a creamy consistency and adds moisture to the finished pudding.
Jelly
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity that contrasts with the mild pudding.

The step that matters

Stir in the whisked egg whites gently. Whisked whites hold air that gives the pudding its lightness. Heavy stirring knocks that air out, so fold them in gently to keep the pudding light.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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