Name: Steamed Batter Pudding
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 cup milk; 2 cups flour; 1 tablespoon melted butter; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; sliced apples or peaches

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 ↓

Steamed Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Beat the eggs and sugar together.
Add the milk, flour, melted butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar; mix well.
Pour the batter over the sliced apples or peaches.

Steam and serve

Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes in a 3‑pint basin.
Serve with hot 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as the pudding sets.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the batter as it cooks.
Milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter into a pourable consistency.
Baking soda: Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the pudding rise.
Cream of tartar: Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help it rise.

Swap the apple

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Applethe original

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