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Dessert

Batter Pudding

A simple egg and flour pudding cooked in a cup over boiling water.

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 ↓

Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Fill a saucepan halfway with warm water and bring it to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, combine 2 tablespoons of flour and a few grains of salt.

  3. Break 1 egg into the bowl and mix it well with the flour.

  4. Gradually add ⅔ cup of milk, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon.

  5. Let the batter stand for 30 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a cup well with butter.

  2. Stir the batter and pour it into the greased cup.

  3. Wring out a small cloth in boiling water, flour it well, and tie it over the top of the cup with string.

  4. Once the water is boiling, place the cup in the saucepan and let it boil for 30 minutes.

  5. Remove the cloth from the cup; the pudding can be turned out or served in the cup.

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. Egg + flourtop 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

Egg
Binds the batter and sets during cooking to give the pudding its structure.
Flour
Forms the starch-based structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid to form a pourable batter that thickens and sets when cooked.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the flour and egg. Vigorous stirring works the flour into a smooth batter without lumps, so the starch hydrates evenly and the pudding sets with a uniform texture.

“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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