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Dessert

Batter Pudding with Fruit

A custard pudding made with potato starch, milk, eggs, and fruit, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Batter Pudding with Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks until lemon-colored, then add sugar and beat again until light.

  2. Mix potato starch in cold milk and add to the boiling milk.

  3. Stir until thickened, then pour into a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer canned peaches or other fruit on top.

  2. Make meringue by beating egg whites and gradually adding sugar until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread meringue over the fruit and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the meringue is light brown.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + peachtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

  3. Potato + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + peachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set custard as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and add richness and color.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and stabilizes the whipped egg whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard.

The step that matters

Stir the starch into the boiling milk until thickened. Starch must be fully dispersed in cold milk first, then stirred while the milk boils so the starch granules swell and thicken evenly; otherwise lumps form and the custard stays thin.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, peach. 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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