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Dessert

Steamed Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from sour milk, Graham flour, white flour, eggs, baking soda, and boiling water.

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

Steamed Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the Graham flour and sour milk to make a batter.

  2. Add the whipped egg yolks and whites to the batter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and mix it into the batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the batter in a covered pan for 2 hours without lifting the lid.

  2. Serve immediately with mock cream, fruit sauce, or cream and sugar.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 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

Sour milk or sour cream
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Eggs
Whipped yolks and whites add structure and lift, helping the pudding set and hold its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour dairy's acid to release carbon dioxide, causing the batter to rise.
Graham flour
Provides the body and structure of the batter, with a coarser texture and nutty flavour.
White flour
Adds gluten-forming structure that supports the batter as it steams.

The step that matters

Steam the batter without lifting the lid. Lifting the lid releases steam and drops the temperature, which can stop the batter rising and leave it dense and heavy. Keeping the pan sealed holds steam around the batter so it cooks evenly and stays light.

“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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