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Dessert

Boiled Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from milk, eggs, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir together the milk, salt, baking soda, and beaten eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture is very thick.

  3. Mix in the cream of tartar.

Fill and boil

  1. Fold in the fruit coated with flour.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  3. Boil for 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + creamtop 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. Flour + creamtop 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
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during boiling.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds its shape and suspends the fruit.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas that lightens the pudding.
Cream of tartar
Acidic partner to baking soda, producing gas that helps the pudding rise.
Fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness, and flavour to the body of the pudding.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit in flour before folding it in. Flour-coated fruit stays suspended in the thick batter instead of sinking to the bottom during boiling, so the pudding cooks evenly.

“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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