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Dessert

Rhubarb Pudding

A baked rhubarb pudding made with rhubarb, sugar, sour milk, eggs, butter, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rhubarb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop enough rhubarb to nearly fill your baking dish and sprinkle sugar over it.

Make and bake

  1. In another bowl, mix sour milk, eggs, butter, baking soda, and enough flour to make a cake batter.

  2. Spread the batter over the rhubarb.

  3. Bake until done.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a platter upside down and serve with cream and sugar.

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. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Rhubarb
Provides the tart fruit base that contrasts with the sweet cake layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and helps draw out its juices as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda so the batter rises and stays tender.
Eggs
Add structure to the batter and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb in the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter over the rhubarb. Batter spread too thinly or unevenly can bake dry in spots, while the fruit may release juice that makes the bottom soggy if the batter is not evenly covering it.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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