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Dessert

Sponge Pudding

A steamed sponge pudding made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sponge Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Separate the yolks from the whites of the eggs.

  3. Add one yolk and a little flour to the creamed mixture, then add the second yolk in the same way.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture along with the remaining flour, baking powder, and milk.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered bowl, cover with greased paper, and steam gently for about 1 hour.

  2. When firm in the middle, turn the pudding onto a hot dish and serve with custard or jam sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped stiff, lighten it and give structure as it sets.
Flour
Forms the starch and gluten framework that sets the sponge into a firm, tender crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Creamed with butter to help trap air and adds sweetness to the sponge.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the pudding rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it sets softly and evenly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten stiff hold air that lightens the sponge. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates it and leaves a dense pudding.

“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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