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Dessert

Cream Batter Pudding

A baked pudding made with sour cream, sweet milk, flour, eggs, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine sour cream, sweet milk, flour, salt, and baking soda.

Make the batter

  1. Separate the eggs, beating the yolks into the mixture.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2½ hours until set and golden.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Whites trap air for lift and yolks add richness and help set the custard-like batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the batter rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure as the batter bakes and sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives lift. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined, keeping the batter airy.

“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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