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Observations on Making Puddings and Pancakes

General notes on boiling puddings and making pancakes, covering the cloth, water, pans and egg substitutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Observations on Making Puddings and Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cloth

  1. Wash the cloth and keep it dry.

  2. Dip the cloth in boiling water.

  3. Squeeze the cloth dry.

  4. Flour the cloth before use.

  5. Tie the cloth loosely for bread.

  6. Tie the cloth tightly for batter.

Cook the pudding

  1. Make sure the water is boiling quickly before adding the pudding.

  2. Move the pudding around for a minute to mix the ingredients.

  3. Strain the batter pudding through a coarse sieve after mixing.

  4. Butter the pans and basins before use.

  5. Prepare a pan of cold water to dip the pudding in after boiling to prevent sticking.

  6. For eggless pudding, use minimal milk and boil for 3-4 hours.

Make the pancakes

  1. Substitute small beer or yeast if desired.

  2. For pancakes, use 2 tablespoons of snow as a substitute for one egg.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Bread + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Flour + beertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together781 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
Dusted on the cloth so the pudding releases cleanly and does not stick to it.
Butter
Greases the pans and basins so the pudding does not stick during cooking.
Small beer or yeast
Optional raising agent that helps the pancakes rise and become light.

The step that matters

Make sure the water is boiling quickly before adding the pudding. Adding the pudding to water that is not yet at a rolling boil slows the cooking and can make the pudding heavy and soggy, because the outside sets slowly and the water temperature drops when the pudding goes in.

“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.