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Common Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from eggs, milk, flour, and salt, served with wine sauce, fruit compote, or raspberry vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Mix the eggs with ½ cup of milk.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Gradually add the mixture to the flour.

  5. Stir until the batter is smooth.

  6. Thin the batter with the remaining ½ cup of milk.

Boil the pudding

  1. Flour a wet pudding cloth.

  2. Pour the batter into the cloth.

  3. Tie the cloth securely.

  4. Place the cloth in plenty of fast-boiling water.

  5. Boil for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with wine sauce, hot fruit compote, or raspberry vinegar.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Eggs
Set during boiling to give the pudding its firm, cohesive structure.
All-purpose flour
Its starch thickens and its proteins set, giving the pudding body and bulk.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the batter pourable and the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Place the cloth in plenty of fast-boiling water. The water must stay at a fast boil so heat reaches the batter quickly and sets the eggs and flour into a firm pudding. Cooled water or a loose, poorly tied cloth lets water seep in, leaving the pudding soggy and loose.

“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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