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Dessert

Boiled Batter Pudding

A boiled pudding made from flour, salt, eggs, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil a saucepan of water.

  2. In a basin, mix flour and salt.

  3. Break eggs into the flour and beat well.

  4. Gradually add milk, stirring smoothly until mixed.

  5. Grease a basin with butter.

  6. Pour the batter into the greased basin.

Cover and boil

  1. Wring out a pudding cloth in warm and cold water, then flour it.

  2. Cover the batter with the cloth and tie securely with string, tying the corners of the cloth over the top.

  3. Once the water is boiling, place the pudding in and boil for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the basin from the saucepan, take off the cloth, and turn the pudding out onto a hot dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter as it sets around the eggs and milk.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm and light as it cooks.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that turns the flour and eggs into a pourable batter and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Cover the batter with the cloth and tie securely. A loose or poorly sealed cloth lets water seep into the batter, making the pudding soggy. Flouring the cloth helps it release cleanly after boiling.

“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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