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Boiled Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from a batter of flour, eggs, milk, and salt, served with a butter‑sugar‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the flour in a clean pan.

  2. Beat the eggs with salt and milk in a jug or basin until just mixed.

  3. Gradually strain the egg mixture onto the flour, beating until smooth and thicker than cream.

  4. Continue beating for 15 minutes with a wooden spoon.

Cook the pudding

  1. Pour the batter into a well-floured cloth and tie it tightly, or fill a buttered basin or mold and cover with a cloth.

  2. Place in boiling water and boil gently for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Alternatively, pour the batter into a pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter and mix with sugar and lemon juice, adding white wine if desired.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pudding as its starch sets during cooking.
Eggs
Set the batter as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like body.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it can be beaten smooth.

The step that matters

Beating the batter smooth. Gradually straining the eggs into the flour and beating well prevents lumps and develops an even batter. Thorough beating also keeps the starch dispersed so the pudding cooks evenly and holds together.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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