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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A boiled milk and flour pudding mixed with egg yolks and butter, served with sweet sauce.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a saucepan, gradually mix 3 tablespoons of fine flour into 1 pint of milk until smooth.

  2. Simmer the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Stir in 2 ounces of butter and let it cool.

  4. Add the yolks of 3 eggs and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Flour a wet cloth or butter a basin.

  2. Pour the batter into it and tie it tightly.

  3. Plunge the tied batter into boiling water, bottom side up, and boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Serve with plain butter and sweet sauce, adding ginger, nutmeg, or lemon peel if desired.

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

Fine flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set batter once simmered.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the cooled batter.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set firmly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmering the flour and milk. Flour must be fully mixed in smoothly and simmered until thick so the starch cooks and swells. Undercooked starch leaves a raw floury taste and a loose, weak pudding.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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