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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from milk, butter, flour, eggs, and sugar, baked until set.

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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter and flour, cooking until thick.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the egg yolks and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Serve with hard 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the pudding, giving it a soft, custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and softens the texture of the cooked base.
Flour
Thickens the scalded milk into a stable base that holds the batter together.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, so the pudding bakes up flatter and denser.

“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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