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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A milk and flour pudding thickened with butter and eggs, simmered and steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 418 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Rub the flour into the milk until smooth, then simmer until thickened.

  2. Stir in the butter when cool, then add the egg yolks.

  3. Optionally add ginger, nutmeg, or lemon peel for flavor.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the mixture into a cloth or basin and plunge it into boiling water, bottom upwards.

  2. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve with plain butter.

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. Ginger + saffrontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together418 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set batter that holds the pudding together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter as it cooks and sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a custard-like batter.

The step that matters

Simmer until thickened. Flour must be fully cooked in the milk as it thickens; undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste and a loose texture.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, ginger, butter, egg. 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 →

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