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A Batter Pudding Without Eggs

A milk and flour pudding flavored with ginger and saffron.

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 ↓

A Batter Pudding Without Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the remaining milk, salt, ground ginger, and tincture of saffron; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pot and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. If desired, add fruit 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. 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. Milk + flourtop 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).

Milk and flour 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens and sets into the pudding as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, custard-like texture when heated.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into a smooth paste first. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch grains coat in lumps before they can disperse. Blending it with a little cold milk first lets the starch spread evenly, so it thickens the pudding smoothly.

Swap the ginger

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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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