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Dessert

Batter and Fruit Pudding

A baked fruit pudding made with a batter of flour, milk, and egg, topped with sliced fruit and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and rhubarb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Batter and Fruit 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.

Prepare

  1. Make a batter by mixing flour, milk, and egg until smooth.

  2. Prepare the fruit: peel, core, and slice apples, or peel and cut rhubarb into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the fruit in a greased pie dish and sprinkle sugar over it.

  2. Pour the batter on top of the fruit.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Flour + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the batter's structure as it bakes, setting the pudding around the fruit.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set firm as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, helping it bake tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and adds flavor to the pudding.
Fruit
Provides the main flavor and moisture beneath the batter; rhubarb, gooseberries, plums, or apples may be used.

The step that matters

Pour the batter on top of the fruit. The batter should be smooth and evenly poured so it bakes into an even layer over the fruit. Lumps left from mixing can stay unset and streaky, and pouring it over fruit that is not evenly spread can leave some areas soggy and others dry.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

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