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Dessert

The Reform Pudding

A boiled pudding made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

The Reform Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Weigh the eggs in their shells and use the same weight for sugar and butter.

  2. Half melt the butter and beat it to a cream.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the butter and sugar, beating until frothy.

  4. Add the flour and lemon zest, and beat everything together.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Alternatively, bake the pudding using cream instead of butter for a more delicate texture.

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 + 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and add structure as the pudding sets.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Beaten with the butter to add sweetness and help create a light texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a firm pudding.
Cream
Can replace the butter in baking for a more delicate texture.

The step that matters

Beating the butter, sugar and eggs until frothy. Beating creams fat and sugar and incorporates air into the eggs. This trapped air gives the pudding its lift and light texture, so under-beating leaves it dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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