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Dessert

Steamed Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from eggs, sour milk, flour, sugar, molasses, raisins, and butter, served with a butter‑sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Steamed Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with sour milk.

  2. Add baking soda and salt, then stir in flour until thick.

  3. If desired, add any fruit you wish.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased mold and steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cream together 1 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of butter.

  2. Add 1 egg and mix well.

  3. Serve the pudding with the 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Sour milk
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the pudding rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, lightening the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the pudding as it thickens and steams.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the sauce.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, sugar, molasses, butter, sauce):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, sugar, molasses, butter, sauce. 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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