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Dessert

Saxon Pudding

A steamed pudding made with flour, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and potato flour, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Saxon Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk and blend it with the flour to avoid lumps.

  2. Add the butter gradually while stirring the mixture over heat.

  3. Remove from heat and continue stirring until smooth using a wooden spoon.

  4. Gradually add the sugar and egg yolks, then stir over heat for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Once the mixture cools, gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and sprinkle it with potato flour and a little sugar.

  2. Bake in a gentle oven, placing the mold in a vessel of boiling water to half its height.

  3. Bake until the top is delicately browned and firm, then turn out.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Orange + potatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Fine flour
Provides the starch structure that holds the pudding together once baked.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a tender, custard-like crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air that lifts the pudding as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Moistens the flour and softens the starch into a smooth base.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently after the mixture cools. Whites trap air only while intact. If the base is still hot, it can deflate the foam, and heavy stirring knocks out the air, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light one.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, butter, sugar, potato. 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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