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
Make the base
Wet the flour with part of the milk.
Cook the flour mixture in the milk for 10 minutes.
Add the butter and sugar while hot.
When cool, add the beaten yolks of the eggs.
Bake
Gently fold in the whisked egg whites and stir thoroughly.
Bake in a 2-quart basin set in a pan of hot water for 30 minutes.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Flour
- Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the flour cooks in and the pudding sets from.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat for a softer, more tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and help set the pudding; whisked whites add air so it rises.
The step that matters
Gently fold in the whisked egg whites. The whites hold air that makes the pudding light and rise in the bake. Stirring vigorously or overmixing knocks that air out, leaving a dense result.
“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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