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Dessert

Castle Pudding

A small baked or steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, flour, egg, and optional lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Castle Pudding

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Castle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.

  3. Beat in the egg until well combined.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add the grated lemon rind and stir lightly.

  5. Fill buttered ramekins or molds three-quarters full with the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

  2. Turn out and serve with wine or jam sauce.

  3. Omit the lemon rind.

  4. Steam for 50 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives a tender, rich crumb through its fat.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, creamed with butter, helps lighten the batter.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter while adding moisture and richness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the pudding's shape as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, making the pudding rise and become light.

The step that matters

Fill the ramekins three-quarters full. The baking powder makes the batter rise as it cooks. Leaving room in each mold lets it expand without overflowing or becoming dense.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour. 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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