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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding with flour, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it is almost boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture, then fold in the egg whites.

  4. Add the flour and sugar, mixing until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pan or mold and place it in a larger pan filled with hot water.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  3. Serve with foam 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Yolks enrich and bind the custard while whites, folded in, lighten its texture.
Flour
Starch thickens the mixture and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a soft, tender custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are folded gently; overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser pudding instead of a light, sponge-like texture.

“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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