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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from egg, sugar, Cottolene, raisins, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg and sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the Cottolene and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the raisins, flour, and baking powder until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with hard sauce.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Forms the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the pudding's structure as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Cottolene
Adds fat that coats flour particles, giving a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding soft and moist.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full hour. Steam cooks the batter gently and moistly, so it sets through without drying out. Stopping early can leave the center underdone and dense, because the batter needs sustained heat to set and the leavening needs time to work.

“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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