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Dessert

Boiled Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from sour milk, flour, raisins, and eggs, cooked in a pudding bag.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dredge the raisins with a little of the flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  3. Mix the yolks, sour milk, and remaining flour to form a batter.

  4. Add the whipped egg whites and dissolved baking soda, and beat thoroughly.

  5. Gently fold in the dredged raisins.

Boil and serve

  1. Flour the inside of a pudding bag and pour in the batter.

  2. Tie the bag securely, leaving room for the pudding to swell.

  3. Drop the bag into a pot of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours, adding more boiling water as needed.

  5. Turn the bag occasionally and keep the pot covered.

  6. When done, plunge the bag into cold water and remove it immediately.

  7. Turn the pudding out onto a plate and serve with cream, fruit, or fruit juice.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and airiness, while yolks enrich the batter and add richness.
Sour milk or sour cream
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that leavens the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the pudding rise.
White flour
Provides the main structure that sets the batter as it steams.
Graham flour
Adds a coarser texture and nutty flavour, and gives the pudding body.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Gentle folding keeps the air in the whites, which helps the pudding rise. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

“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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