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Dessert

Souster or Dutch Pudding

A yeast‑leavened pudding made with butter, milk, flour, eggs, currants, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Souster or Dutch Pudding

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and milk with the flour.

  3. Add the eggs and yeast, and mix until well combined.

  4. Fold in the currants and sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  2. Let cool slightly before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Flour + sugartop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Flour
Forms the bulk of the structure that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it a light, airy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps browning in the oven.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the dough.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.. Yeast activity and oven heat both affect rise and set. Baking until golden brown ensures the centre has cooked through and the crust has developed flavour.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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