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Boiled Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, eggs, milk, and salt, served with butter, sugar, lemon juice, and optional white wine.

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. Strain the egg mixture into the flour gradually, beating until smooth and thicker than cream.

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

Cook and serve

  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 let it 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.

  4. Serve with melted butter, sugar, a little lemon juice, and optional white wine.

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. Flour + milktop 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
Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets during cooking.
Eggs
Set during cooking to bind the batter and give it a firm, custard-like body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and keeps the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Beating the batter smooth. Straining the eggs into the flour and beating well breaks up lumps and fully hydrates the starch, so the batter cooks into an even, smooth pudding rather than a lumpy one.

Swap the lemon

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