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Dessert

Common Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from eggs, milk, and flour, served with wine sauce, fruit compote, or raspberry vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly.

  2. Mix the eggs with ½ cup of milk and strain through a sieve.

  3. Gradually add the egg mixture to the flour, stirring until smooth.

  4. Thin the batter with the remaining ½ cup of milk.

Cook the pudding

  1. Dust a wet pudding cloth with flour.

  2. Pour the batter into the cloth.

  3. Tie the cloth securely.

  4. Place the cloth in boiling water and cook for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with wine sauce, hot fruit compote, or raspberry vinegar.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Set as they heat, giving the pudding its firm, bound structure.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch framework that gives the pudding body and holds its shape.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it pours easily into the cloth.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth securely. A loose cloth lets boiling water seep into the batter, making the pudding soggy and possibly breaking it apart. The eggs and starch set as they heat, so a snug wrap helps the pudding keep its round shape.

“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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