Skip to main content
Dessert

Batter Pudding

A sweet pudding made from butter, flour, currant wine, sugar, eggs, milk, and spices, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter with flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add water, currant wine, and brown sugar; stir until well combined.

  3. Whisk in egg yolks and heat gently without boiling.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks and whites for 15 minutes.

  2. Gradually mix in flour, milk, and salt; beat well.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour batter into a buttered cloth, tie tightly, and boil for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with the prepared sauce.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Sets with heat to give the pudding and sauce their body and structure.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the sauce, while beaten whites add lift and a lighter texture to the batter.
Milk
Adds liquid and richness, keeping the batter moist as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour, and helps form the initial roux with flour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the sauce.
Currant wine
Contributes fruity acidity and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk mixture gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when warmed slowly, but if they get too hot they curdle and turn grainy, so the sauce should be heated gently and kept below a simmer.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, wine, sugar, egg, cinnamon, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More batter pudding recipes

Boiled 71Baked 53Apple 30Steamed 30Fruit 19Meat 9 See all 241 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes