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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, milk, eggs, and optional wine or vinegar, served with butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and ½ cup milk until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture, along with more milk until the batter reaches a proper thickness.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a basin with fresh butter and pour the batter into it.

  2. Tie a cloth over the basin and boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Turn the pudding out of the basin and serve with melted butter, sugar, and grated nutmeg in a sauceboat.

  4. Optionally, add white wine or vinegar to the 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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 set into a firm, sliceable pudding when boiled.
Flour
Thickens the batter and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth, pourable batter.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly and adds richness when served.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth over the basin. A loose cloth lets water into the basin during boiling, which dilutes the batter and makes the pudding soggy. The cloth should be snug and the basin kept covered while it boils.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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