Name: Batter Pudding, Baked
Ingredients: 1 pint batter; 1 ounce sugar (optional); 1 ounce butter (optional); compote of fruit (for serving); butter and sugar (for serving)

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Batter Pudding, Baked

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease a shallow baking dish.
If desired, mix in sugar and butter into the batter.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into the prepared dish.
Bake until the top is nicely browned.
Serve immediately with fruit compote, butter, and sugar.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Batter: Forms the base of the pudding, setting into a light, tender body as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.

“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.