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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A baked milk and egg pudding thickened with sugar and flour, finished with butter and served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the sugar and flour, wetting with a little cold water until smooth.

  3. Pour the sugar and flour mixture into the boiling milk, stirring until it thickens and is smooth.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the butter and stir into the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  2. Fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes and serve with cream 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened custard is built on.
Flour
Its starch thickens the hot milk, giving the pudding body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps keep the custard smooth.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, soft crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken, while whipped whites trap air for a light, risen texture.

The step that matters

Pour the flour paste into the boiling milk while stirring. Starch must be fully mixed in and heated to thicken evenly. Adding it slowly while stirring prevents lumps and gives a smooth custard before the eggs go 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.

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