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Dessert

Castle Puddings

A steamed pudding made with flour, sugar, butter, egg, milk, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Castle Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Beat in the egg until the mixture is creamy.

  3. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then stir them into the mixture.

  4. Gradually add milk until the batter drops easily from a spoon.

Fill and steam

  1. Fill well-buttered dairy moulds three-quarters full.

  2. Steam the puddings until cooked through.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, giving the puddings a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the puddings together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, helping the puddings rise and stay light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a dropping consistency.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk until the batter drops easily from a spoon. Adding milk slowly lets you control the batter's consistency. Too thin and the puddings may turn dense or collapse; too thick and they may be heavy and dry.

“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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