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Dessert

Batter-pudding Without Eggs

A simple eggless pudding made with flour, milk, ginger, saffron, and optional fruit, boiled for an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 418 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Batter-pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, a little milk, salt, ginger, and saffron.

  2. Combine with nearly a quart of milk.

Cook

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Add fruit if desired.

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. Ginger + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together418 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 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. Milk + saffrontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Starch thickens as it heats with the liquid, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that the flour thickens, and its proteins add richness and a soft set.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour. Milk and flour settle and scorch easily on direct heat over a long boil. Keeping the heat gentle and stirring often prevents sticking and burnt flavour, and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, saffron. 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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