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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from flour, sugar, milk, butter, egg yolks, and folded egg whites, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix the sugar and flour in a bowl.

  2. Wet with a little cold milk and stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Cook until thickened and smooth.

  4. Add the butter and mix well.

  5. Stir into the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

Fold and bake

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into cups or a shallow pan.

  3. Place the dish in a pan of hot water and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. 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. Flour + milktop 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).

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
Yolks thicken the custard base while beaten whites lighten and set the pudding structure.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that gives the pudding body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens and the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air in the whites. Stirring or beating them down deflates the foam, so the pudding rises less and turns denser.

“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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