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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and boiling water.

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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, gradually stir the milk into the flour until mixed.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a 2-quart pudding mold.

  4. Steam slowly for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix the sugar and butter by hand until creamy.

  2. Add the flavoring.

  3. When ready to serve, stir in the boiling water.

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. Flour + milktop 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firmly during steaming.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the batter into a tender pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a creamy texture in the sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it become smooth and creamy when beaten with butter.

The step that matters

Steam slowly for 2 hours. Gentle, steady steam cooks the egg-thickened batter evenly. Boiling vigorously can make the pudding rise unevenly or develop a rough, pitted 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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