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Dessert

Danish Flour Pudding

A steamed pudding made from butter, flour, boiled milk, eggs, mace, and baking powder.

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

Danish Flour Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour smoothly.

  3. Slowly pour in the boiled milk while stirring continuously until the mixture is clear, about 30 minutes.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Finish the batter

  1. Add the egg yolks one at a time.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. Add the mace for flavor.

  4. Finally, mix in the baking powder.

Boil

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Starch that thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, set base.
Butter
Fat that carries flavor and adds richness and tenderness.
Milk
Liquid that hydrates the flour so the mixture thickens as it heats.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Whipped air that lightens the batter and helps it rise and set.
Baking powder
Acid and base that release gas, adding lift to the batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Gentle folding keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Those bubbles provide lift, so vigorous stirring deflates the batter and leaves a denser pudding.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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