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Dessert

Puff Pudding

A baked puff pudding with a custard filling made from milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and lemon extract.

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

Puff Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a pot, combine boiling water and melted butter.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of flour while the mixture boils, stirring until smooth and velvety.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs and baking soda.

Bake and add custard

  1. Preheat a pudding dish and butter it thoroughly.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly done.

  4. Make an opening in the edge of the pudding.

  5. Pour in the custard made from milk, flour, sugar, and eggs, flavored with lemon extract.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist crumb.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with the boiling liquid, it forms a smooth base that gives the pudding its structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to hold the pudding together.
Baking soda
Helps the batter rise as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, which sets as it bakes into a soft filling.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the boiling mixture until smooth. Stirring the flour into the boiling liquid cooks the starch and helps it blend without lumps, which gives the batter an even, smooth base.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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