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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A steamed pudding made from milk, flour, butter, and egg yolks, served with plain butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Batter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, gradually mix flour into the milk until smooth.

  2. Simmer the mixture until it thickens, then stir in the butter and let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, add the egg yolks and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Flour a wet cloth or butter a basin, then pour the batter into it.

  2. Tie the cloth tightly or cover the basin, and place it in boiling water, bottom side up.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve with plain butter.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth batter that sets into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the finished pudding.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the pudding as it cooks and sets.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly or cover the basin. A loose cloth or cover lets water seep into the pudding, making it soggy and diluting its texture. A snug seal keeps the batter moist while it steams in the boiling water.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, lemon. 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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